London answer to a Kiwi crisis
Renters’ advocate Kate Day just bought four-ninths of a house.
Day, one of the advocates from Renters United, and her partner teamed up with family members of the same age to buy a house in high-priced Wellington, and are now all happily living together.
But as a first-time home buyer, Day was horrified when she discovered there would be no KiwiSaver first-home grants for her and her fellow buyers.
Accessing KiwiSaver grants is just one of a number of roadblocks to a very British solution: partitioning large houses into two or more separate homes.
In the United Kingdom, and London especially, many people live in partitioned dwellings within what once were large, single family homes.
And it’s been estimated that London alone could get another 374,000 or so homes from partitioning existing large houses.
Kay Saville-Smith from research firm Cresa has crunched the numbers on the stock of partitionable homes New Zealand’s big population centres, and believes paritioning could provide a way of intensifying cities quickly and cheaply, without creating massive urban sprawl, or changing the visual landscape of cities.
‘‘We estimate that around an additional 180,000 dwellings could be generated without impinging on greenfield sites or unutilised vacant residential land,’’ she said.
‘‘We keep banging on that we want affordable homes in the right places, but we never get it,’’ SavilleSmith said.
Partitioning existing houses could help meet demand, and provide a fairer deal for young people, Saville-Smith believed.
‘‘It’s a living strategy, really. For many people, it is no longer financially viable to live where they want to live,’’ she said.
Day found the cost of co-buying a house to split was far lower than had the two couples each bought places of their own.
That meant a lower deposit for each of the buyers, but the KiwiSaver first-home grant eligibility rules included maximum house prices, and there was no exemption for multiple buyers clubbing together.
‘‘The challenge we had as firsttime buyers was we couldn’t access the KiwiSaver first-home grants as the price of the house was too high. We weren’t eligible. They should be assisting first time buyers, not creating barriers,’’ Day said.
New Zealand cities are actually in a better position to benefit from partitioning homes than cities such as London, Cresa found, as the average size of a New Zealand home is significantly larger than a UK homes.
Day said local councils needed to be more encouraging to people wanting to split homes, and some needed to change their planning rules. The ‘‘logic’’ of the individual council planning rules was not always clear, she said.
Rather than seeing partitioning homes as a UK solution to be imported, Saville-Smith referred back to New Zealand’s past.
‘‘In the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, partitioning was not uncommon in New Zealand, particularly in larger, older houses,’’ Saville-Smith said.
Some councils explicitly allowed partitioning, in some cases with provision for the striking of a separate title for a partitioned dwelling, with the Auckland Council leading the way. But she said: ‘‘Only four of 67 councils appear to make explicit provision for conversions and partitioning.’’