Rules to deliver cheaper homes for first-time buyers
Homes selling for about $500,000 or less will be part of new Hamilton subdivisions, and first-home buyers could get a leg-up too.
Four special housing areas in the works could deliver about
2600 homes to Hamilton – and the city council has decided at least
10 per cent of them must be affordable. Defining that proved tricky but city councillors did on Tuesday: a sale price of 90 per cent of the average Hamilton home value, or less. That translates to about $500,000 at today’s prices, council said.
And, if Government will accept the condition, mayor Andrew King wants the cheaper houses to be for first-home buyers. They’d be the winners, he said, ‘‘and I think that’s what this council wants: to help those firsttime home buyers’’.
Special housing area legislation was introduced by the previous Government to make housing more affordable by getting more built, faster, but Cr Geoff Taylor is worried council could be putting too many roadblocks in the way. King said the potential first-home buyer condition could help those people on to the property ladder and stop gaming of the system. ‘‘If that wasn’t there, there would be nothing to stop a developer selling all his 10 per cent to an interested party and then selling them on again at a higher rate.’’ Taylor also asked why King wanted to measure affordability based on home values instead a floor size limit of 120sqm. A small apartment could still sell for a high price, which wasn’t the intention, King replied. For example, Te Awa Lakes developers could meet the condition with a whole row of 120sqm apartments along the river, he said, but kit them out nicely and put them on the market for
$1.2 million.
Hamilton’s new affordability criteria would affect four SHAs in the works – in Rotokauri North, Te Awa Lakes, Eagle Way and Quentin Rd – and any which follow. Previously, councillors had given chief executive Richard Briggs ‘‘riding instructions’’ to make sure 40 per cent of the homes in each development could be part of the Government’s KiwiBuild programme. ‘‘I have got an impractical resolution I can’t deliver at the moment,’’ Briggs said. ‘‘It doesn’t meet the demands of the developers, and I can’t get the Ministry [of Business, Innovation, and Employment] to accept a Gazette notice which references KiwiBuild.’’
However, King said his proposal signalled to developers that the Government wanted to deliver some of the homes through KiwiBuild.