## 4 Accessing and Understanding Building Ratings and Variations in How These Matter  
This section outlines how participants navigated aspects related to building safety, including whether structural safety was a key concern when deciding where to live. We document whether owners' or renters' knowledge about hazards, building ratings, and structural safety is important to them in experiencing agency with being prepared. We do not judge if their narratives are 'accurate' or official representations of NBS ratings rather than the code per se. However, participants expressed knowledge of the NBS as being 'up to code' or 'not within code' as the following excerpts demonstrate. Thus, for example, a participant might express a building of below 34% NBS rating to be 'not within code'. We also discuss participants' accounts about tenanting properties that were identified as being below 34% rating of the NBS, purchasing properties that might be earthquake-prone, and not being concerned by earthquake risk at all. Further considerations are the material,psychological, and emotional responses of having to deal with strengthening buildings and being governed by Body Corporate organizations. When residing in an earthquake-prone city, information about building ratings and structural safety is supposed to inform people of building risk so they have the agency to act. Physically placing'stickers' on buildings aims to highlight risk while assigning responsibility to building owners for rectifying any safety issues. All of the participants were aware of the earthquake rating system, which had various effects on how they engaged with where to live in the city. Some reported that it helped them to rationalize where to reside. For example, when a building failed to meet an acceptable rating, [PERSON] was deterred from renting that apartment:  
_\"There was, when we were looking to move to Wellington, a really nice apartment that we wanted to move into and then we found out it wasn't up to earthquake code so then, no--we're not going to stay there.\" ([PERSON])_  
While unclear what 'earthquake code' meant for [PERSON], the excerpt demonstrates how safety from building harm during an earthquake can be more important than residing in _'nice'_ surroundings. It also represents how people can have agency to choose safety. Safety, in this sense, becomes a privilege in that these participants knew about building ratings and had the resources to be able to select where to live. It has long been known that education provides particular forms of social advantage [42], which in a disaster setting can transpire into disaster preparedness [43]. [PERSON] talked about how important it was to her sense of wellbeing that her partner had an architectural degree and understood structural engineering when deciding where to live. Similarly, during his interview, [PERSON] explained that 'understanding science' enabled him to interpret safety reports to increase his security in the event of an earthquake:  
_\"I can read the scientific literature and understand what they're actually saying. I also, on the building front, my Father used to renovate buildings so I actually had a bit of a background on that front as well.\" ([PERSON])_  
As well as having scientific expertise, [PERSON] had social support from his father who renovated buildings and offered [PERSON] advice regarding structural safety. These forms of social capital or networks of human relationships featured regularly in participant accounts as they talked about the connection between knowledge and financial capital. Participants were able to utilize any knowledge they had about building safety alongside the financial resources to purchase properties with higher safety ratings. This in turn increased participant experiences of ontological security and sense of safety ([PERSON], 1991), whether real or imagined.