First Home Buyers
What Is Kāinga Ora? The First Home Loan Scheme Explained
Photo: Kindel Media / Pexels
Kāinga Ora isn't a lender, a landlord you can ring about your own street, or a grant cheque waiting in the mail — though I've had clients ask about all three. What is Kāinga Ora, in one line: a Crown agency that builds and manages state housing, and stands behind New Zealand's best-known low-deposit home loan. It doesn't lend you the money itself. A bank or non-bank lender does, with Kāinga Ora underwriting the risk so a 5% deposit is enough instead of the usual 10–20%.
That distinction matters, because a lot of what's floating around online about Kāinga Ora is out of date. A grant that stopped taking applications back in 2024 still gets recommended like it's live. A shared-ownership scheme that's been fully subscribed for a while still shows up in "government schemes for first home buyers" listicles. Sorted, it isn't.
Here's what Kāinga Ora actually is, what it still offers, and what's quietly disappeared from the list — so you're not chasing something that's no longer there.
What Kāinga Ora Actually Does
Kāinga Ora – Homes and Communities is a Crown agency, formed in October 2019 when Housing New Zealand merged with its development arm and the KiwiBuild Unit. Its main job has nothing to do with your mortgage: it's New Zealand's largest landlord, housing close to 200,000 tenants across roughly 69,000 public homes, and it runs urban development projects that mix public housing, affordable housing, and open-market homes in the same neighbourhood.
Home ownership support is one part of a much bigger remit — think of it as the housing side of a government department that also happens to run a mortgage-adjacent product, not a specialist lender with a call centre built for first home buyers. That's worth knowing before you ring them expecting bank-style service — you won't get it, and that's not a knock on them, it's just not what they're built for.
The part that actually touches your home loan is the First Home Loan, plus a couple of other schemes worth knowing about before you assume they're all still running.
The First Home Loan: What It Actually Gets You
The First Home Loan is Kāinga Ora's headline product, and it works differently to how most people assume. Kāinga Ora doesn't lend you the money — a participating bank or non-bank lender does. Kāinga Ora underwrites the loan, which lowers the lender's risk enough that it can accept a 5% deposit instead of the usual 10–20%. (Underwrites is doing a lot of work in that sentence — think patient guarantor, not someone literally sitting under your mortgage with a pen.)
That's a real gap. Most lenders on our panel still want 10–20% down for a standard owner-occupier loan, so a First Home Loan can be the difference between buying now and saving for another two or three years.
House price caps used to apply — they were removed in 2022, so you're no longer ruled out just because of the suburb. Income caps still apply, and Kāinga Ora reviews them from time to time, so check the current numbers before you assume you're over or under. A one-off insurance premium applies too, paid upfront or added to the loan — ask your lender for today's rate, since that's changed before and it'll change again.
Not every lender on a panel offers it, either — which is the next thing worth knowing. Getting pre-approved through a First Home Loan-friendly lender follows the same process as any other pre-approval — see our guide on mortgage pre-approval in NZ for what you'll need to have ready.
What's Quietly Gone: The Grant and First Home Partner
Here's the part a lot of "government help for first home buyers" articles still get wrong. The First Home Grant — up to $10,000 towards a new build, or $5,000 towards an existing home — stopped taking new applications as part of Budget 2024. Kāinga Ora's own home ownership page doesn't list it as a current option any more. If a site is still telling you to apply for it, that site hasn't been updated since May 2024.
The First Home Partner scheme — where Kāinga Ora co-owned part of the property with you — is in the same boat. It's fully subscribed and only serving existing customers; there's no new-applicant queue to join.
Neither closure is a secret, but neither gets updated fast enough in the corners of the internet that still rank for "first home buyer grants nz." Worth confirming directly at kaingaora.govt.nz before you build a budget around either one.
What's Still Actually Available
Strip away what's gone and here's what's still on the table for a first home buyer right now:
- The First Home Loan — 5% deposit, no house price cap, income caps still apply.
- KiwiSaver first-home withdrawal — if you've been a KiwiSaver member for at least three years, you can generally withdraw your savings to put towards your first home deposit.
- Kāinga Whenua Loan — a separate Kāinga Ora-backed option to help remove finance barriers for whānau Māori building on multiply-owned land.
That's a shorter list than it used to be, but it's an accurate one — and an accurate shortlist beats a long list with two dead links on it. For the fuller rundown of deposit sources and how the numbers stack up, see our page for first home buyers.
Not Every Lender Says Yes to a Kāinga Ora-Backed Loan
Here's the opinion I'll put my name to: an adviser who only deals with one or two banks isn't really advising you on a Kāinga Ora-backed loan — they're telling you whether their two banks happen to participate, which isn't the same thing.
Not every bank or non-bank lender offers the First Home Loan, and participation can change. We work across all 20 banks and non-bank lenders on our panel — 7 banks, 13 non-bank — and we know which ones are actually writing First Home Loans this month, not which ones did last year.
That's the actual value of using an adviser here: not explaining what Kāinga Ora is (you've just read that part for free), but knowing which of the lenders who'll say yes to a 5% deposit will also say yes to your specific income, credit file, and property. See our guide on home loan deposits in NZ for how the First Home Loan's 5% route stacks up against a standard deposit.
A First Home Loan in Practice
A young couple came to us a while back — both late 20s, combined income around $110,000, with a 10% deposit saved and KiwiSaver ready to withdraw. ANZ said no: one partner had been on a fixed-term contract for under six months, and the bank wanted a full 12 months of continuous PAYE income before it would even look at the file.
The numbers hadn't changed. The paperwork just had a shape their usual bank's policy didn't accept. We placed them with a lender whose employment-contract policy was more flexible, used their KiwiSaver withdrawal to get the deposit across the line, and they settled on their first home in South Auckland.
Nobody at that lender needed convincing about Kāinga Ora — it wasn't that kind of file. But it's the same principle as a First Home Loan: the right lender says yes to circumstances a bigger bank's checklist says no to, and knowing which lender that is up front saves months of sitting on a declined application waiting for an employment anniversary to pass.
Why This Is Easier With the Right Adviser
Working out which of the schemes above still apply to you — and which lender on our panel will actually say yes — isn't something a government website is built to walk you through one-on-one. That's the adviser's job, not Kāinga Ora's.
We check your numbers against all 20 banks and non-bank lenders on our panel — 7 banks, 13 non-bank — before telling you whether a First Home Loan, a standard low-deposit loan, or something else entirely is the better fit. We reply within 2 business hours, and we've settled 200+ home loans since 2017, including plenty for first home buyers navigating exactly this list. For the fuller picture of getting from application to settlement, see our guide on how to buy a house in NZ.
There's no fee for that first conversation. In the typical case, the lender pays us once your loan settles — financial advisers are required to disclose exactly how, and we do, before anything's lodged. AML Financial Services Limited is a licensed Financial Advice Provider — FSP 714331. Kundan Singh, FSP 512966. Both on the public register, worth checking for any adviser you're talking to.
Sweet as if Kāinga Ora sounds straightforward on paper. Give us a call before you assume a scheme applies to you, or before you assume it doesn't — we'll tell you which is true, not which one a five-year-old article says is true.
