{"id":592329,"date":"2026-09-06T22:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/592329\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T22:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-06T22:12:11","slug":"christopher-luxon-speaks-to-mike-hosking-as-national-pledges-more-help-for-first-home-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/592329\/","title":{"rendered":"Christopher Luxon speaks to Mike Hosking as National pledges more help for first-home buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

National\u2019s latest campaign promise would see buyers earning up to $300,000 eligible for the 5% deposit scheme.<\/p>\n

Since 2003, the In Reach loan scheme \u2013 renamed the First Home Loan scheme \u2013 has helped more than 33,000 households to buy a home.<\/p>\n

The current income cap is $95,000 for an individual with no dependents, or $150,000 for multiple buyers or a single person with dependents.<\/p>\n

Announcing the policy on Sunday<\/a>, Luxon and his housing spokesman Chris Bishop said the cap was too restrictive and hadn\u2019t been updated since 2022, with around half of first-home buyers now earning more than $146,000.<\/p>\n

The proposed $300,000 cap would not distinguish between single or multiple buyers.<\/p>\n

National wanted home-ownership rates back to their peak in the 1990s, when almost three-quarters of households owned their own home.<\/p>\n

Only two-thirds of households currently own their home, although first-home buyers have been buying a record share of properties<\/a> as house prices have fallen.<\/p>\n

The party estimated its policy would cost the Crown $4-$6 million extra per year.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the Green Party has announced its plan to break up the supermarket duopoly by nationalising 120 supermarkets to create a new Government-owned supermarket chain known as KiwiMart<\/a>.<\/p>\n

KiwiMart would have a mandate to prioritise affordability. Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said currently two companies controlled what almost everyone in New Zealand ate, while taking $1m daily in excess profits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is money that should be in people\u2019s pockets,\u201d Swarbrick said.<\/p>\n

The plan has been costed at $2.8 billion, which includes buying 120 Woolworths and Foodstuffs stores and two distribution centres, and capitalising KiwiMart to make it a commercially viable competitor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National\u2019s latest campaign promise would see buyers earning up to $300,000 eligible for the 5% deposit scheme. Since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":592330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[93640,806,3237,16426,28470,44934,36023,2082,71,266,5838,196324,18060,16427,1456,130,3556,111,43,139,69,51925,7192,312,3170,17213,684,7563,61,6730],"class_list":["post-592329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-300k","tag-as","tag-buyers","tag-christopher","tag-earning","tag-expanding","tag-firsthome","tag-for","tag-from","tag-government","tag-help","tag-hosking","tag-loan","tag-luxon","tag-mike","tag-more","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pledges","tag-risk","tag-says","tag-scheme","tag-speaks","tag-there","tag-those","tag-to","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=592329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/592329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/592330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=592329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=592329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=592329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}