Kāinga Ora is great - if you meet their eligibility criteria for help.

Right now, first-home buyers have got it tough.

Having friends and family is great.

We are hearing a lot of headlines about the struggles of builders, new builds, and the cost of living.

Believe it or not - the buy now pay later facilities are debt and need to be treated as such when applying for a mortgage.

The home start grant is free money given by the government, this was in the past quite hard to meet the eligibility criteria as there were very low price caps you had to buy the property for, and you had to earn under a certain amount to be able to get the free money. (up to $20k per couple)

In the 12 months before you apply, you must have earned:

Price House Cap Changes (you need to buy a property under this price to get the free $$$)

A lot of people tell us that they think the bank should give them a mortgage because they figured out that the repayments are around the same as their current rent payments.

Out of all the debt you could have; student loans are probably one of the best.

Inflation is up, so as a bid to control this the OCR is creeping up too.

If you are a first home buyer with less than a 20% deposit then this is something that you need to get during part of the due diligence process.