Kāinga Ora to halt over 200 developments, sell vacant land
Thursday, 19 June 2025
Kāinga Ora will halt over 200 housing developments and sell 36 hectares of vacant land.
The announcement is part of the latest stage of the Government’s reset at the housing agency.
The decisions made will allow Kāinga Ora to make one-off accounting write downs of between $190 to $220 million.
Kāinga Ora has announced that it will halt over 200 housing developments and sell around a fifth of the vacant land it owns.
The announcement marks the latest stage in the Government’s reset of the state housing provider.
The agency assessed over 460 social housing projects and found that 212 did not meet financial requirements or were not in suitable locations. These projects will not proceed at this stage.
They also reviewed their vacant land holdings to determine what made commercial sense to retain versus relinquishing land for others to develop.
As a result, Kāinga Ora chief executive Matt Crockett said they intended to sell roughly 36 hectares of vacant land.
Crockett said the land they intended to sell was no longer needed for social housing projects or for urban development work. “Selling this land opens opportunities for others to increase the country’s housing supply,” he said.
The changes form part of a review of Kāinga Ora’s social housing delivery pipeline and its land holdings.
“These reviews were essential to ensuring we only progress new housing projects that make commercial sense and that we sell land which is surplus to our requirements so we can get on a more financially sustainable footing,” Crockett said
He added that the decisions made because of the review will allow Kāinga Ora to make one-off accounting write downs of between $190 to $220 million.
“Like other prudent developers we always make provision for some write downs, but the reset reviews have highlighted an abnormally high number of projects and land holdings that no longer make sense for Kāinga Ora if we want to get ourselves in a better financial position,” he said.
“We need to bite the bullet on this. There is often some short-term pain that comes with the resetting of past decisions, but making these write downs now is the right, financially responsible thing to do.”
Housing Minister Chris Bishop announced a “turnaround plan” for Kāinga Ora in February, saying it would refocus the agency on what he called their core purpose of being a “good social landlord” and helping to build new homes at market rates or cheaper.
The plan involved improving tenant and community management, improving the agency’s housing portfolio, improving organisational performance, and adopting a more persistent and sustainable approach to funding.
As a result of the plan, Bishop said the agency will be involved in around 1900-2000 construction events per year, made up of approximately 1500 newly built homes and 400 retrofits of existing homes, from mid-next year.