4 July 2026 · Paragon Portables
A standard nobody outside the industry has heard of quietly decides whether your home is easy to insure, easy to finance, and easy to sell. Here is what it is.
NZS 3604:2011 — Timber-Framed Buildings — is the New Zealand standard that sets out how a timber-framed building is put together so that it stands up. Stud spacings, bracing, fixings, connections, how the roof ties to the walls and how the walls tie to the floor.
It is not glamorous. It is also the single most consequential thing about a home that you will never see once the linings go on.
Why it decides more than structure
Three different people care whether a building is built to NZS 3604, and none of them are the builder.
- Your council, because compliance with the standard is one of the accepted routes to demonstrating Building Code compliance.
- Your insurer, because an uncertified structure is a risk they cannot price, and plenty of them simply will not.
- Your lender, because a building they cannot value and cannot insure is not security they can lend against.
Where transportable homes get a bad name
The reputation problem in this industry is not the good end of it. It comes from sleepouts, cabins and relocatable units built to no particular standard, sold as "no consent needed", and then discovered years later by a valuer or an insurer.
That is a real problem and it is worth being careful about. The test is simple: ask for the documentation. A home built to the standard has an engineer behind it, a consent behind it, inspections behind it, and paperwork you can hand to a bank.
What we do about it
Every Paragon home is built to NZS 3604:2011, consented, and inspected. We also publish the wall build-up — five layers, each with one job — because the parts you are never shown are the parts worth showing.
It comes with a 10-year structural guarantee and a 12-month build warranty, and Contract Works insurance is in place for the duration of the build.
Next step
Send us the address and we will look at it properly.
General guidance only gets you so far. Everything on this page changes once someone looks at your actual site — and that conversation costs nothing.
