Fletchers pushes shared ownership

You’d buy a house with a life partner, a friend, or a sibling.

But would you consider cobuying one with Fletcher Building?

The giant NZX-listed building company’s house-building arm, Fletcher Residential, thinks some Kiwis might.

And it’s fighting a rearguard action to water down proposed laws which might stop it.

With the Labour-led Government under pressure to deliver on its massive Kiwibuild scheme, private businesses like Fletchers are seeking measures that will make home-building cheaper and easier.

But Fletchers also wants the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill altered to ensure it could market ‘‘rent to buy’’ and ‘‘shared equity’’ schemes on the homes Fletcher Residential builds.

These are options sometimes used overseas that allow people unable to raise a deposit to rent to buy or to buy a proportion of a property with the developer retaining an equity share.

In both cases, the resident has rights to buy out the partial equityowner at a later date.

Using such models, Fletchers could become ‘‘a long term equity investor in housing schemes designed to deliver more affordable or social housing’’, said Fletchers’ Steve Evans.

‘‘It is important that the Government preserve as much as possible a full range of options for the private sector to be part of the solution for addressing housing shortages in New Zealand,’’ he said.

Currently, the OIA bill, which would ban non-residents from buying New Zealand homes, would also prevent foreign owners, including Fletchers, from retaining ownership of a property once it is built.

Fletchers would like these forced sale proposals watered down, so that shared equity and rent to buy schemes can be brought to market.

But it also called for foreign buyers to be allowed to buy properties ‘‘off the plan’’, and hold onto them after they are completed, as long as they rent them out, and do not maintain them empty as speculative assets to preserve and sell on in mint condition.