Developer has first-home buyers in mind
Adrian Chooi worked in a petrol station when he first arrived in New Zealand. Now he is working with an iwi collective to provide homes for the community he settled in.
His company, Koru Homes, is working with Wai-Works, a collective of Te ti Awa-affiliatedA¯businesses, to deliver affordable housing in Lower Hutt and to get people in the community into work.
He said the development of eight homes in Wainuiomata will be the first in a series of projects aimed as boosting the number of houses available to applicants for the Government’s first home grant.
In Wellington, properties exceeding $550,000 qualify.
Wai-Works members would sell the houses and provide drainage and earthworks services.
Koru Homes and Wai-Works providers would look to take on local apprentices to complete the work.
Chooi said he knows what it’s like to worry about putting a roof over his head, having arrived in Lower Hutt in 1988 as an immigrant from Malaysia.
He moved to Wainuiomata in the early 1990s, when the suburb was reeling from job losses with industrial work drying up in Lower Hutt. Chooi said things had worsened for the working-class community as many key services had left the suburb and developers moved in to build houses they couldn’t afford.
In October, median house prices in Lower Hutt reached a record high not
of $761,000, according to the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand.
Having since trained and worked as a management accountant, Chooi had returned from Canada to resettle in Wainuiomata and wanted to help his old community.
Two of the houses in the development would be allotted to first-home buyers, he said.
A second stage, still being designed, will deliver up to 22 homes of which about six would be priced
for first-home grant seekers.
Stage two and later developments, which would be on bigger lots, would most likely feature standalone homes priced for firsthome buyers.
‘‘Developers have been creaming it [but this is] a bit different – these houses could be sold at higher prices,’’ said Anania Randall of CK & Co Realty, the listing agent for the development.
He said the project was unique for its focus on the social outcomes of buyers and the community.