Two Billion Dollar KiwiBuild Housing Scheme

Housing minister Phil Twyford revealed the new $2 billion KiwiBuild scheme, explaining how new residences will be built in the next decade.

In the coming three years, KiwiBuild aims to gradually ramp up to 10,000/year high-quality affordable new residences for first-home buyers, half in Auckland, to build 100,000 residences in a decade.

Twyford said it would take about three years for the programme to kick into full-strength, starting out at a few hundred or possibly 1000 residences in the first year. Auckland's Hobsonville Point is the model the Government will use to duplicate that precinct throughout Auckland, Hamilton, Tauranga, Queenstown and potentially other areas where first-home buyers struggled, he said.

Twyford outlined how there would be three ways the Government would implement KiwiBuild:

• First, by stepping into already-under way schemes like Hobsonville Point and securing a large number of planned new residences there,

• Second by buying off-the-plan units in planned developments like new high-rise Auckland CBD apartment blocks

• Third by creating its own development sites and bringing in group house builders, particularly on Crown-owned land.

Twyford has met Fletcher Building's residential and land development chief executive Steve Evans, representatives of Mike Greer Homes and Mark Todd of Ockam Residential who he said were "absolutely bursting to be part of this work. Fletchers are keen to do more housing. They've done a lot of work on panelization."

"We're going to do large-scale urban renewal projects around rail corridors at Avondale, New Lynn and Panmure, around town centres, taking advantage of the rail and roading network.

"We're going to be as ambitious as possible. There is a $2b cash injection for KiwiBuild over 10 years and we will recycle that money over and over," he said of the state buying the properties, then on-selling to first-home buyers. –housing minister Phil Twyford

"It's not going to happen in the first week. We've always said we'll step it up over three years to hit the 10,000-a-year target. There's a bunch of projects already under way and we'll make sure there's more affordable places there, at Northcote, Mt Roskill and Hobsonville Point." –housing minister Phil Twyford.

Northcote is a Housing NZ Corporation redevelopment, intensifying land around Lake Rd. Mt Roskill is the same, between May Rd and Dominion Rd and Hobsonville Point is on the waterfront off State Highway 18. HLC is running all three for Housing NZ Corp.

"Part of the concept of KiwiBuild is that work will be tendered to companies that can scale up and build thousands of homes a year, instead of dozens. Fletcher and Mike Greer are the two most obvious. We've had extensive conservations with GJs [Gardner] and lots of others too. So we're wanting to tender work to companies that can drive down the build cost due to economies of scale, off-site manufacturing and panellised construction." –housing minister Phil Twyford.

"We need half a dozen other firms that can scale up and then we get a much more competitive building industry. We're going to drive down cost through bulk procurement and accessing suppliers and materials and by giving multiple contracts that enables [companies] to invest in off-site manufacturing and the big objective is to build more competitive, innovative and productively." –housing minister Phil Twyford

Asked if state or taxpayer funds was being risked through buying off the plans, Twyford said "when you're buying land, you always have the land. There's a huge need for affordable homes, only 5 per cent of new builds have been affordable."

Statistics NZ data shows around 30,000 residences are now given consent annually on a national basis, but Twyford said: "Our goal is to ramp that up to 40,000 or 50,000 and also build more state houses. KiwiBuild homes will be a range of styles and tenures as social, state and private and a range of price brackets."

As for criticism that there won't be enough builders and trades people, Twyford said a new migrant category would be introduced.

"There will be a special KiwiBuild visa that will allow people in the construction to fast-track temporary work visas. We will reduce migrants coming in but nothing will be allowed to constrain the construction industry to get workers. We are going to work directly with the Building and Construction Industry Training Organisation and other industry organisations. We'll be really cranking up the number of construction workers. KiwiBuild requires 5000 additional jobs but the industry already has massive demand so we will ramp up apprenticeships and bring more New Zealanders back from overseas, get people trained in the sector and people who are retired, bring them back." –housing minister Phil Twyford

Read the original report here:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11936574

Originally Written by Anne Gibson