This three-bedroom, 90sq m Kāinga Ora house in Remuera is the country's most valuable state house, worth $3.324m. Photo / Dean Purcell
The nation's 10 most valuable state homes all sit on sought-after central Auckland land and are worth a combined $30 million, new figures obtained by the Herald reveal.
It has sparked questions about whether the handful of heavily subsidised social housing tenancies represent the best use of taxpayer money when 25,000 desperate families are consigned to the state housing waiting list.
The 10 humble standalone properties are nothing flashy and in various states of disrepair.
Some sit on large sections ripe for development, one of them littered with rusting furniture, tyres and trash.
One tenant has resided at her well-kept Remuera home for the last 36 years and claims she has been promised security of tenure for the rest of her life.
The most valuable Kāinga Ora home - according to the agency's own valuations provided to the Herald under the Official Information Act - is a three-bedroom bungalow on a 1200sq m Remuera section worth $3.324m.
It is tenanted by a woman and her two children who have lived there for several years and commands a weekly rent of $738, though Kāinga Ora says the actual amount paid by its tenants is often subsidised.
The property's most recent Auckland Council valuation puts it at $3.6m, while a four-bedroom villa across town in Ponsonby, which Kāinga Ora lists as the nation's fifth most valuable state house, is actually worth $3.9m according to its latest CV.
Based on figures provided by Kāinga Ora, if the agency was to sell its 10 most valuable properties, it could replace them with 40 average-value Auckland state homes, or 50 others nationwide.
Opposition MPs say Kāinga Ora should review its property portfolio to ensure it's meeting the needs of the thousands of Kiwis in desperate need of housing.
Even some state housing tenants say it makes little sense to have so much money tied up in valuable properties that could be bulldozed to make way for more intensive housing.
The Remuera street boasting the nation's most valuable state house was once a market garden and now has six Kāinga Ora properties dotted among privately-owned architecturally-designed mansions.
Three Kāinga Ora homes which border each other in the dead end street - including the most valuable - are worth a combined $10m. They are zoned for intensification and if levelled could provide development potential for a suite of town houses across nearly 3000sq m of land.
One of their tenants is celebrated Kiwi musician Larry Morris, who fronted popular 1960s band Larry's Rebels and who was inducted into the New Zealand Music Hall of Fame in 2020.
Morris has lived in his $3m-plus state house for about 12 years, caring for his two elderly parents there before they died, and says he has been lucky to call the dilapidated property his home.
But given the country's worsening housing crisis, Morris wonders why Kāinga Ora has not flogged off the valuable properties years ago to reinvest in more affordable housing in lower-value areas, or bulldozed the enclave to develop infill housing for those in need.
"I'm grateful for having a state house. But I see sense in bowling all these over and putting a whole lot of houses in here for people. It makes total sense and I say that as a sitting state house tenant.
"I hope I'm still alive and have this house for a few more years. But I'm also a realist and the reality is you've got to look after the people, and these houses, it's over the top what they're worth."
Anita Jones, 37, has lived in the $3.9m state-owned Ponsonby villa since 2016 along with six children. The trained fabricator and welder had previously lived at a Henderson Kāinga Ora property but relocated to central Auckland to escape domestic violence.
She said she loved the area, which was quiet and had nice people. But the property was cold and badly insulated, she said. She and her children were sick when the Herald visited.
Though Kāinga Ora lists the property's weekly rent as $861, Jones said she paid just $242 a week.
She said she's offered to give up the property for a bigger family, and agreed that housing only 10 families in $30m of taxpayer-owned property made little sense when so many others were desperate for somewhere to live.
"I just reckon that [where there is now] one house they could put up other houses for other people in need."
National's housing spokesman Chris Bishop said many people would raise their eyebrows at the valuation figures.
"There's 25,000 people on the waiting list and Kāinga Ora has to constantly assess its portfolio to make sure it's meeting the needs of the wait list and clearly that's not the case at the moment."
He declined to say what National would do differently, saying it would release policy in due course.
Act's housing spokeswoman Brooke van Velden said the properties were not a good use of taxpayer money.
The Government should sell the homes and sections, and use the money to pay down debt.
"There is no loss in housing, as the homes will still be lived in.
"New Zealanders feeling squeezed by a cost-of-living crisis finding ways to cut their own costs would expect the Government to do the same."
Kāinga Ora strategy, finance and policy general manager Gareth Stiven said the agency had been building large-scale housing developments on its own land for years across Auckland to provide more accommodation for those in need.
Since 2018 it had delivered nearly 4000 new state homes in Auckland, partly by demolishing older homes and replacing them with two or three new properties.
The agency planned to add up to 40,000 public, affordable and market homes over the next 10 to 15 years.
Kāinga Ora had a responsibility to house those in need, while working to increase housing supply, Stiven said.
"With the 10 [most valuable] Auckland homes, these are housing New Zealanders that have a need for public housing.
"As we continue to increase the supply of homes for people and whānau, this provides more options to relocate households if we decide to redevelop or sell a site in future, including these higher value properties."
Kāinga Ora had recently redeveloped some of its land in higher-value suburbs such as Westmere, Ōrākei and Epsom, "where we own contiguous sites and have had an opportunity to better use our existing landholdings".
He added that valuations had increased significantly in recent years and would continue to change over time.
Associate Housing Minister Poto Williams said the Government's priority was to ensure people in need had access to warm, dry, safe accommodation.
"This Government has delivered more than double the number of state house new builds in Auckland than were delivered under the last Government. We continue to invest billions into building public housing as well as infrastructure to encourage more housing developments."
He was allowed to live there if he paid bills and did maintenance - but he didn't.