Housing Minister Megan Woods has announced today a new “progressive home-ownership” scheme to potentially help 4000 households get into first homes.
The Minister was making the announcement in her office in Wellington about a much-awaited Kiwibuild reset.
The progressive home ownership scheme can include shared ownership or rent to buy options.
The shared ownership scheme will allow families and friends to come together in co-ownership to fulfil their fast-slipping dream of buying home in the current housing market.
Now family and friends can each use their $10,000 First Home Grant and their KiwiSaver to buy their first home together.
In a rent to buy scheme a household can rent a new home from a third party and may be charged discounted rent to enable them to save a deposit. The household may have the right to purchase the home either outright or through a shared equity or ownership scheme.
$400 million, previously allocated for Kiwibuild appropriations has been redirected to support progressive home-ownership scheme.
The reset will also allow a reduction in the deposit requirement to 5 per cent for government-backed mortgage.
Stating the obvious, the Minister acknowledged that the previous goal of building 10,000 homes in the next 10 years were “overly ambitious,” and would be replaced by an approach where the “government plans to build as many homes as it can, as fast as it's able to, in the right places.”
“The housing crisis developed over decades and won’t be solved overnight. We’ve made a good start across the wider housing portfolio but KiwiBuild isn’t working so we are changing it. When policies aren’t working we are honest about that and fix them,” Megan Woods said.
We will also be dropping the target of 100,000 houses over ten years. It was overly ambitious and lead to contracts being signed in places where there was little first home buyer demand,” Megan Woods said.