Luck won’t fix crisis, says buyer
Getting an affordable house in Auckland might feel like winning the lottery, but it shouldn’t have to take a lottery to get one, says one first-home buyer.
Jessica Simons, 27, entered five ballots to win an opportunity to purchase an affordable home at Hobsonville Point, starting in July last year. Then in October, she won.
At $450,000, the one-bedroom apartment by developer Nga¯ i Tahu Property, located right across the road from the high school she works at, was a deal that couldn’t be beaten, she said.
The secondary school teacher said while she was conscious of the role luck played in helping her to get a foot on the property ladder, she couldn’t see a better alternative.
‘‘If they don’t have the ballot, then people are going to bid their way up anyway and increase the price.’’
Simons said if she hadn’t won, she might have just been able to ‘‘scrape through’’ with another one-bedroom apartment she’d seen, priced at
$505,000. However, on a single income it would have been ‘‘really pushing it’’, as banks have capped her borrowing amount at $320,000.
Since 2012, 424 buyers at Hobsonville Point have accessed an affordable home through the ballot scheme.
Entries range from 30 to more than
100 per ballot, depending on the type of homes being released, and are drawn on average once a month.
Salaries are capped at $85,000 and
$130,000 per annum for single and multiple buyers respectively.
Twenty per cent of the remaining homes to be sold at Hobsonville Point will be delivered under the Axis Series scheme. The sale prices of between
$450,000 and $650,000 are set by the Minister of Housing.
Tony Houston, a former managing director of G.J. Gardener Homes West Auckland, said issues including construction costs, loss of profit and the length of time it took to complete an affordable house when compared with a market-priced home contributed to problems of housing affordability.
From a developer’s perspective, building costs were ‘‘crazy’’, he said.
Houston estimated that the construction of a 72-square-metre house cost about $4500 per sqm, which put developers in a ‘‘semi-loss situation’’.
Upper Harbour MP Paula Bennett described Hobsonville Point as an ‘‘outstanding initiative’’ fast-tracked by the former government, and said the ballot had been ‘‘life-changing’’ for many when demand outstripped supply.
Ingrid Arnestedt, an affordable housing programme manager at Housing New Zealand subsidiary HLC, said the Axis Series scheme was designed to assist first-home buyers within a certain income bracket but was not the sole answer to housing affordability.
Meanwhile, Simons is grateful she won’t have to flat for much longer, but knows she’s in a lucky minority.
‘‘We shouldn’t have to have a lottery to put a roof above [our] heads.’’