Couple first to get into home with city subsidy

Daniel and Leah McCurdy were saving for an apartment but the Auckland City Council scheme made it possible for them to buy this house in Avondale. Photo / Dean Purcell

Archaeologists Daniel and Leah McCurdy have bought a $445,000 house for just over $300,000 thanks to an "affordable housing" scheme subsidised by Auckland City ratepayers.

The couple, aged 31 and 25, will move in about five weeks into the first house to be built under the controversial shared-equity scheme approved by Mayor Dick Hubbard before the last council elections in 2007.

Incoming mayor John Banks promised to scrap the scheme if elected, but found that he had to honour a contract signed a few days before the election with the New Zealand Housing Foundation, a charitable trust which has built similar shared-equity homes in West Auckland.

But it scaled the project back from 100 houses part-financed by $9 million from the council over 10 years to 30 houses with only $3.8 million from ratepayers over three years.

Plans for a major subdivision in Denny Ave, Mt Roskill, were scrapped. Instead the foundation is buying individual sites in cheaper parts of Auckland City such as Avondale, Otahuhu and Mt Wellington.

The McCurdys' four-bedroom, 158sq m house on a 450sq m back section off Rosebank Rd in Avondale is valued at $445,000. The Housing Foundation discounted the price to $440,000 and agreed to keep 29 per cent of the equity in the house.

That left $312,400 for the McCurdys to pay. They had to have a deposit of at least $10,000, and have a commercial mortgage on the rest of their share, but do not have to pay either rent or interest for the use of the foundation's share of the house.

The scheme also required that they had to be first-home buyers working in Auckland City with a combined household income below $90,000.

Mr McCurdy said he had been saving for six years.

Mrs McCurdy said: "Then we got married and saved up some money and still didn't have enough for a house - if we're looking to have kids we are not looking at an apartment. We couldn't have afforded a house like this."

Housing NZ also offers a shared-equity scheme with a minimum deposit of 5 per cent for first-home buyers with household incomes between $55,000 and $85,000.

But Auckland City community services chairman Paul Goldsmith said the Auckland scheme was cut back because it was unfair.

"You get a very small number of lucky people helped by everybody else," he said. "I'm not sure on what ultimately fair basis you can make that choice."