PHOTO: Photo: 123RF
It’s been a long time since a $200,000 mortgage could get you into your own home in Queenstown.
But now a local housing trust is offering 25 apartments for the same price they cost to build.
The catch – you won’t be able to sell the property on the open market or transfer it to anyone else.
The apartments at the Toru development in Frankton will finally start to eat into the growing waiting list of those needing help from the Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust.
The trust’s executive officer, Julie Scott, said the apartments were priced at numbers considered affordable wherever you lived in New Zealand, but especially in Queenstown.
“Under our leasehold model, the households are buying in at around 50 percent of what it cost us to purchase the unit from the developer. So some of those one-bedders are down as low as $200,000,” she said.
The average two-bedroom unit cost about $320,000.
The 25 apartments were part of the Secure Home programme. Households essentially bought the construction costs and paid a ground rent of 1 percent of the land value, about $40 to $50 per week.
The Toru apartments were the cheapest homes the trust had ever offered, Scott said.
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