Building & house rules
The exact rules that decide whether a structure counts as a home.
What counts as a home
Four walls and a door. That is the whole requirement — build that out of any materials you like and a Pokémon can live in it. You can even place a habitat inside a building.
Two limits apply. Exceed 11 × 12 in width versus depth and the structure stops being classed as a habitat at all. And no matter how big you build, a self-built home houses at most four Pokémon — and none of them will move in until there are three distinct pieces of furniture inside.
Building kits
Kits bought from the shop build a complete structure for you — dens and huts (small, functional homes), cottages and houses (large interiors worth decorating), plus machines, decorations and whole set-pieces stocked with rare items. Building a kit needs helper Pokémon; bring a Tinkaton and the time collapses, turning a "next day" build into one hour.
Each area has a budget of 40 building points. Every kit costs 1 or 2 points depending on size, and once you hit 40 you cannot place another kit in that area. Relocation and demolition kits let you undo a placement.
Magnet Rise: the builder's tool
Post-game, a Magnemite hidden under the launch site in the Withered Wastelands teaches Magnet Rise. It lets you fly freely and, crucially, place up to nine blocks at once instead of one — rotatable vertically or horizontally, with a Replace mode that swaps existing blocks and returns the old ones to your bag.
Its Break function (Y) costs less PP than Rock Smash or Cut and is far quicker. Hold to charge and the whole object goes into your bag intact — including things that normally cannot be picked up, like stone debris and broken streetlights, and partially grown plants.