Do apartments have to meet the Healthy Homes heating standard?

Yes. There is no apartment exemption: a rented apartment's main living room needs qualifying fixed heating sized for the room, the same as a house. Many modern apartments pass easily, small, well-insulated living areas need modest capacity, and a correctly sized heat pump or fixed electric heater covers it.

Where apartments get complicated

Some buildings genuinely constrain what can be installed: body corporate rules about external units, no available flue paths, structural limits. The regulations deal in what is reasonably practicable, and later amendments refined how capacity and top-ups are assessed, so an apartment with real constraints is assessed on those facts rather than simply failing. The current detail lives on tenancy.govt.nz, and for a constrained building it is worth reading closely rather than assuming either way.

What to hold on file

• The heating assessment for the specific apartment, not the building in general.
• Any body corporate rules or professional advice that constrain installation options.
• The installed heater's specifications and invoice.

The pattern is the same as everywhere else in the standards: the apartment is either compliant or exempt-in-part for documented reasons, and both positions need paper behind them.