$168,000 state house sets pattern for cheap homes

The Otara show home is intended to provide a blueprint for affordable housing. Photo / Dean Purcell

A new $168,000 Auckland state house is nearly finished in what the Government hopes will be a heartening example for first-home owners.

The three-bedroom, 120sq m house at 128b Preston Rd, Otara, was built for $1400 a square metre.

Gordon Moller, the Auckland architect who headed a judging panel which picked the design, said the show home proved it was possible to build a good new, affordable house.

The $168,000 does not include the land cost and QV lists the property as being worth $365,000: $185,000 for the 1156sq m site and $180,000 for the house.

At 120sq m, the house is less than the size of the average 200sq m new house built in New Zealand but Blair Cranston of Cranston Homes did not think $1400/sq m was particularly cheap.

Prices ranged from $1200/sq m up to $3000/sq m but many houses his firm built were in the $1500-$1800 bracket, he said.

Fairway Homes of Newmarket built the house in a joint project by Housing NZ and the Department of Building and Housing.

It will be owned by Housing NZ, was built on a subdivided state section and is due to be finished in mid-October.

Ian Johns of Fairway said the house was actually 125sq m, equating to about $175,000, but could not confirm any numbers and referred questions to Housing NZ.

Stephen Smith from S3 Architects in Auckland won the Starter Home Design Competition, which drew 140 entries.

Mr Moller, convener of the judging panel, said the winning design was striking, innovative, modular, allowed expansion and was well planned.

The house was built to promote new rules to fast-track building consents.