KiwiBuild's official web site shows 33 homes completed, leaving 967 to rise by the middle of this year to reach the programme's inaugural 1000-home target.

Phil Twyford, Housing and Urban Development Minister, has now indicated that 1000-home target now seems unachievable.

"I can't guarantee that [1000 built by July this year]. I think it's going to be tough to meet that target," he said.

The comments come after a damning report, from the New Zealand Initiative, slammed the Government programme as a "bewildered beast".

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The report claims KiwiBuild has little hope of delivering on its goals and is just a distraction from the real housing solutions.

Whether KiwiBuild can reach Labour's 100,000 high-quality affordable homes in a decade is unknown.

The KiwiBuild programme officially started on July 1, last year so to meet the initial target, 1000 homes would need to be completed by June 30 or July 1 this year.

However, more homes might have been completed than the 33 shown on the www.hud.govt.nz web site.

Those 33 homes completed are understood to have been current as at December 4. The 33 was homes then complete, not the number sold.

The KiwiBuild development team gets periodic updates from developers on their build progress at different times. The sales team gets updates from the real estate agents on the progress of sales.

Turning these into a constantly up-to-date snapshot nationally when they are subject to daily change is understood to be somewhat of a challenge but the staff at KiwiBuild are understood to be working on getting more current figures displayed.

Officials said this month that KiwiBuild numbers exceeded the 33 shown on the web site and in fact 55 homes were sold "or in the process of sale".

Those are:

• McLennan in Auckland: 23

• 340 Onehunga Mall, Auckland: 20

• Northlake, Wanaka: 4

• Tuatahi, Auckland: 5

• Mason Square, Auckland: 3

Twyford said late last year that 50 families would wake up in KiwiBuild homes on Christmas day. Precisely how many places were completed, sold and being occupied by December 25 remains unknown, due to those logistical challenges. The best information that could be found on that is that it currently running at somewhere between 33 and 55 homes.

In an interview NewstalkZB's Mike Hosking today, Twyford said that while the first few months have been tougher than expected, overall KiwiBuild had been a success.

"We are six months in, we have got 47 homes completed, several hundred under construction, 4000 under contract and another 10,000 on top of that planned for the large scale urban development projects that we are in the process of setting up."

Twyford hit back at claims KiwiBuild prices were unrealistic - and denied that in New Plymouth they were higher than average house prices in the town.

"[The prices] are only higher than the average price in the suburb where they are being built, which has basically been a bombed out, derelict neighbourhood that used to be a state housing area which was mostly demolished."

"The New Plymouth KiwiBuild houses are significantly lower than the average price in New Plymouth as a whole.

"We are putting in modest affordable houses that are below the New Plymouth average."

He added: "You say the houses aren't affordable for people - in fact, more than half the KiwiBuild houses that have been built and sold have gone to people who were on household incomes of less than $100,000.

"In our most expensive housing markets, there are young couples who might have a household income pre-tax of let's say $150,000, they cannot find anything affordable in places like Auckland and Queenstown."

Twyford, in a separate interview, said New Zealand had an issue with housing and that Auckland and Queenstown it was "severely unaffordable".

"This country is a housing basket case. That's why we're doing Kiwibuild, that's why we're doing more state housing," Twyford told RNZ.

When asked about the head of KiwiBuild Stephen Barclay's resignation, Twyford said it is an employment dispute that he won't wade into publicly.

"I'm going to allow that dispute to be resolved in a proper way. I'm not going to comment on the detail, it would be inappropriate and unhelpful for me to do that."

However, he said he stands by KiwiBuild and its commitment to build affordable houses for New Zealanders.

"We are going to build affordable houses for first home buyers. We will refine and improve this programme as we go until we get it right but this is a 10-year programme."

- additional reporting by Newstalk ZB


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