Fact one: no KiwiBuild homes are finished yet. Fact two: they are due to be, by next month.
No pressure, Phil.
Housing NZ Corporation says the first KiwiBuild homes are up and will be completed next month on a South Auckland site.
Read more: Applicants can earn up to $180k to qualify for KiwiBuild homes
That will be the first concrete evidence of the Government plan to build 100,000 affordable high-quality homes in a decade.
Phil Twyford, Housing and Urban Development Minister, said yesterday people would be living in those first KiwiBuild homes by October.
"Eighteen of these homes are expected to be completed by the end of August 2018, with the remainder completed by the end of the year," according to information from Housing NZ Corporation about the project selling two-bedroom homes for $499,000, three-bedrooms for $579,000 and four-bedrooms for $649,000.
Read more: Tauranga's mayor and builder query KiwiBuild eligibility criteria
The first batch of 18 homes are in the Papakura-Takanini area on a 24ha ex-Defence Force site owed by Housing NZ Corporation where the construction of the new McLennan housing estate is advancing.
The homes are nearly 30km from Auckland's CBD and critics say the HNZC scheme started well before last year's election and that Twyford was taking credit for a project hatched under National's time in power, using a handful of state homes as KiwiBuild to get an early result.
"We will have families moving in in October," Twyford told the KiwiBuild conference at ASB Showgrounds, Greenlane yesterday. "We are delivering 30 KiwiBuild homes at McLennan for $579,000," he said, referring to three-bedroom places.
Those initial 30 are in a much bigger estate where about 600 places are going up.
The KiwiBuild homes are on Liberation Rd and Regiment Rd, a spokesperson for Twyford said today. The site is accessed via the Southern Motorway turnoff onto Great South Rd at Takanini, then off Walters Rd and onto Battalion Dr.
To be eligible to enter the ballot to buy an affordable, high-quality KiwiBuild home, households must earn no more than $180,000, individuals no more than $120,000. You must be a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident and intend to own and live in the house for the first three years.
Who has bought the first KiwiBuild homes is as yet unknown as no details have been released.
Housing New Zealand has provided the infrastructure for the McLennan project, the development's web site says, working with Studio Pacific Architecture and others.
After McLennan, KiwiBuild homes are due to rise on a site of around 30ha at Carrington's Unitec site, Point Chevalier beside the Waitemata District Health Board's Mason Clinic.
Twyford said yesterday that good progress had been made on Kiwibuild.
After KiwiBuild registrations opened yesterday, more than 5000 were received. Today, a ministry official said at 12.25pm that 17,095 registrations of interest had been received.
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