Editorial: Govt needs to help with first homes

Once there was a time when buying your first house was seen as a right.

Part of the whole plan of life, and where (in terms of a roof over one's head) that life would be lived.

It is a tale of accommodation which meanders way back to the days when television was not yet part of the New Zealand lifestyle.

Suburbs were developed and a programme involving things called State houses was developed.

The Government of the time introduced an entity called the State Housing Corporation and they would whip you up a modest and affordable deposit.

They helped us step into our first home about 35 years ago.

I would put the $25 into the envelope in the drawer in the dining room every Thursday after getting paid and on Friday we'd take it in to the "housing corp" office and hand it over ... getting a receipt in return which we'd paste in the book.

Simple?

Oh yes, with a capital S.

And what made it simpler was that there were plenty of modestly priced houses about - the sort you'd look at and think 'yeah, this'll do up pretty good".

Plenty of work about too.

In many arenas of life the passing of time, or evolution or whatever you care to call it, results in improvements.

It has effectively worked for automobiles, health and technology ... but it sort of backfired when it came to trying to exercise the first-home "right" of years past.

It's tough to gather up a deposit today, in a landscape ruled by the Reserve Bank reacting to the "crisis" housing situations in Canterbury and Auckland.

For the median average price house in Napier, under the 20 per cent deposit scheme, a first-home buyer would need $65,000, and that is a tough call.

There are some banks doing 10 per cent deals, and Housing New Zealand has some initiatives to help out, but it's still a tough call.

Those already in the market, having bought a home or two, have the equity to move up, and it's a good time to move up by all accounts.

But the first-home buyer has sort of been left behind, and I believe in this arena there is scope for the Government to step in and staple together a more focused plan to get young and deserving working families (who will pay rates and taxes all their lives) into their own spread.

The money must be there to get an account under way, given they gifted the last America's Cup campaign $36 million.

That alone would have been 200 get-started loans of $18,000 ... and at the end of the day (unlike the cup) they'd have eventually got it back.