The Government's revamped KiwiBuild scheme is designed to "remove the barriers" from its first over-ambitious attempt, Housing Minister Megan Woods said today.
Ms Woods explained on TVNZ1's Breakfast today how the new reset would work after being quizzed by host John Campbell.
It comes after the Government's plan to solve New Zealand's housing crisis hasn't performed well, forcing a shake up of who's in charge and yesterday's reset announcement .
Labour's key election promise to build 100,000 homes has been scrapped, as well as studio and one-bedroom KiwiBuild homes commitment lowered from three years to one, up to 10 per cent of KiwiBuild homes can be over price cap if four bedrooms or larger and the Government underwrite reduced.
Changes for new home owners include Government backed deposits for first home loans reduced to five per cent from 10 per cent, progressive home ownership schemes, shared equity or shared ownership, rent to buy and limit of earnings removed for First Home Grants so multiple buyers could be eligible to combine grants for a home.
Today, Ms Woods told Breakfast one of the biggest challenges for people getting into their first home was getting a deposit together.
"They're paying mortgage-free payments in their rent," she said. "What we've done is we've reduced that deposit down to five per cent. By the time you put in your HomeStart grant, you do your KiwiSaver release, actually people are getting pretty close to be able to have a deposit, even in markets like Auckland.
"We have removed some of the barriers and we are committed to getting New Zealanders into homes. We're going to keep building, we are still committed to making sure we're feeding that affordable pipeline.
"The fact that you can buy houses that are $600,000 or under in Auckland is something KiwiBuild as given us."
She also said the market had started to deliver because the scheme had introduced affordable houses into the pipeline.
However, Ms Woods wouldn't put a number on how many houses the Government expected to build. She said setting the 100,000 initially was "counter to what we're doing".
"We saw the targets were driving the behaviour rather than being a way to measure it," she said, adding the new target was simply "as many as we can, as fast as we can".
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