New housing areas take total to 80

Eighty Special Housing Areas, due to contain about 40,000 sites or residences, have been approved throughout the Auckland region.

Ree Anderson, Auckland Council's director heading the Housing Project Office, said the most advanced of the fast-track estates was at Weymouth, where five new houses were already up and 18 were expected to be finished before Christmas.

The 80 areas have been approved in four tranches, the latest for sites at Orewa, Pinehill, Ellerslie, Mt Eden, Takapuna, Northcote, Avondale, Orakei, Birkenhead, Mt Wellington, Papakura, Hingaia and Tamaki.

The sites are owned by many different parties including Housing NZ, Auckland Council Properties, other state agencies, iwi or private property developers.

Anderson said a quota of 10 per cent of new residences in each of those 80 areas had to be affordable housing, priced from $360,000 to $460,000.

But the project office had no control over when construction took place and the development cycle could take some time, she said.

The council would continue identifying new areas until the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan came into effect around 2016.