Air base sites may be too pricey for first-home buyers

Sean Bignell says the first homes will be ready by March. Photo / Dean Purcell

Roads, artificial lakes and even playground structures are sprouting at the massive Hobsonville housing development - but political promises to make some houses affordable for first-home buyers have so far come to nothing.

The former air base, now being sliced up into sites for 3000 homes and a boatbuilding complex, was originally designed by the former Labour Government to include 15 per cent state rental housing and another 15 per cent "affordable" housing such as shared-equity.

The National Government elected in 2008 dropped the state housing but made Hobsonville the flagship for its proposed "Gateway" scheme, giving first-home buyers free use of Crown land for up to 10 years provided they start building on the land within a year.

Last October, Housing Minister Phil Heatley promised that "up to 100" of the 660 lots in the $300 million first stage of the development had been "earmarked as Gateway housing sites".

But with the first houses due to go on sale from September, Hobsonville Land Company chief executive Sean Bignell says he still does not know how many sites may be kept aside for Gateway.

An indicative budget of up to $96 million for Gateway over the four years to June 2013, included as a "fiscal risk" in last year's Budget, was deleted in December's Treasury Economic and Fiscal Update because the risk was "no longer considered to be material".

This year's Budget did not mention the scheme.

A spokesman for Mr Heatley said at the time of last year's Budget that the scheme would be launched last October.

When he visited Hobsonville in October, Mr Heatley said the scheme would be launched "soon" and the first sections would be available this year.

On Friday, he said the first Gateway properties were "on track to be delivered in the next few months".

"The full details of the exact number and location of Gateway housing sites is still being worked on and has yet to be finalised and will be announced in due course," he said.

Mr Bignell said the first batch of homes at Hobsonville would include townhouses, terraced housing and traditional free-standing houses, with prices ranging from about $350,000 to $700,000-plus.

Construction is due to start in August or September, with the first houses ready to occupy next March.

Exact prices and numbers available in each price range are still being determined by the four companies contracted to build the first 82 homes.

Mr Bignell said the development was aimed at a mix of buyers from young couples buying their first homes to retired people downsizing from larger homes or rural blocks.

"If you look at any large-scale development, they have to do a mix of housing; that's just the normal economics."

But the prices may be too high for many first-home buyers.

For comparison, half the houses sold in Waitakere in the first quarter of this year went for under $390,000, and the cheapest quarter of houses - the sector dominated by first-home buyers - sold for less than $335,000.

Waitakere Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse said affordability had clearly dropped down the priority list for the development.

"The boatbuilders and marine industry workers won't be able to afford to live close to where they work."

Meanwhile, the Labour Government's shared equity scheme, in which the Crown took up to a 30 per cent share in a first-home buyer's house to reduce the amount the buyer had to borrow, ends this month. Applications for the scheme closed last Friday.

Hobsonville Point:

* 3000 homes to be built over the next 10 to 15 years.

* Old wharf to be rebuilt for ferry service starting late next year.

* Boatbuilding precinct with shared launch facilities by 2012.

* Old Air Force buildings to be converted for cafes, shops and workshops.