New Zealand's first KiwiBuild buyers will be selected this week and they will be paying $100,000 less than they would on the open market, new data shows.
Ballot entries for the first 18 homes - in Papakura in South Auckland - closed at midnight on October 5, with the winners drawn at random and to be notified by email this week.
KiwiBuild is a Labour initiative which promises to build 100,000 affordable houses for Kiwi first home buyers in the next decade. Eligible buyers enter the ballot for a home and wait to see if their name is drawn.
The homes up for grabs include 12 three-bedroom houses selling for $579,000 and six four bedroom houses priced at $649,000 - prices that appear to be a steal.
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That's because the homes are selling for at least $100,000 less than what they might fetch on the open market, according to "ball park" estimates by property analysts CoreLogic.
The analysts found "similar" three-bedroom homes in Papakura - built after the year 2000 - were currently worth a median price of $684,500, while four-bedroom homes were worth a median $769,000.
It wasn't hard to imagine Auckland first-home buyers were therefore "really jumping" at the chance to buy KiwiBuild homes with three-or-more bedrooms, senior research analyst Kelvin Davidson said.
The savings come as some pundits have criticised the KiwiBuild building programme for being a case of Government sponsored lotto in which only a select group of first-home buyers get the chance to benefit from it.
Ultimately, the Government hopes to overcome some of this by building 100,000 KiwiBuild homes over the next decade with 50,000 of those in Auckland.
But so far supply is limited. In addition to the Papakura homes, a further 25 KiwiBuild houses are for sale in Onehunga where ballot entries close on October 15.
A separate ballot for 10 homes in Wanaka, near Queenstown, opened on October 8.
Couples earning up to $180,000 and singles earning up to $120,000 were also eligible to enter the ballot for the homes with the successful buyers being not allowed to sell the homes for at least three years - a measure designed to stop investors flicking the homes on for quick profit.
Housing Minister Phil Twyford earlier defended the decision to allow first-home buyers with higher incomes to apply, saying the random nature of the ballot meant the homes would be available to richer and poorer families alike.
The sale of the first KiwiBuild homes also comes as more first-home buyers have recently been finding their way back into the Auckland property market.
One in every four houses sold in New Zealand in August went to a first-time buyer - a level not seen since prior to the Global Financial Crisis in 2006-07, according to CoreLogic.
The analysts found Auckland first-home buyers purchasing this year had paid a median price of $699,000 for their homes.
When broken down into homes of different sizes, the buyers paid a median of $740,000 for three-bedroom Auckland homes, $642,000 for two bedrooms and $515,000 for one bedroom, the data showed.
It meant buyers were willing to pay prices well above the maximum $500,000 to $650,000 price caps the Government has set for similar sized KiwiBuild houses in Auckland.
