PHOTO: Megan Woods on Newshub Nation. Credit: Newshub.
Housing Minister Megan Woods says caps on the Government’s First Home Grant scheme might soon be indexed to house prices, to stop them becoming obsolete so quickly.
First-home buyers qualify for up to $10,000 when buying places under a certain dollar value, which varies from region to region.
But house prices have been going up so fast recently, there are often few that qualify. The caps are based on the median figure in the lower-quartile of recent sales – the bottom eighth of properties. The Government revealed the latest caps in March, and a Newshub investigation found slim pickings in most of the major centres.
“There are some opportunities at the lower end of the market,” Woods told Newshub Nation on Saturday. “I opened some KiwiBuild opportunities here in Auckland that have been sold this week. But look… I think that the price caps, very quickly, get out of date.”
The cap in Auckland is $700,000 for a new property or $625,000 for an existing property – which are unaffordable by the traditional measure that the average value should be about three times the average household’s income.
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