• Kāinga Ora is selling high-value properties in expensive suburbs to fund more affordable housing elsewhere.
• Chief executive Matt Crockett aims to run a leaner operation, focusing on maintaining and refurbishing existing homes.
• It follows criticism last year that the agency’s debt rose from $2.7 billion in 2018 to $12.3b by June 2023.

Kāinga Ora is moving out of Auckland’s most expensive suburbs and offloading valuable properties, the agency’s new boss says.

Chief executive Matt Crockett put up a slide stating the agency would be selling a proportion of its high value properties, during a presentation at today’s 2025 Residential Development Summit, run by the Property Council.

The agency last year came under fire for the cost of its building programme with one complex in the suburb of Meadowbank becoming a lightning rod for criticism after it was revealed each new apartment cost $1.2 million to build.

“You’ll have all heard the examples, right, like we have some big valuable properties in some pretty expensive suburbs,” Crockett said to the audience.

“Those probably don’t make sense to be in our portfolio, and we can exit those and redeploy that money to actually kind of build two, three-plus places somewhere else.”

Crockett’s comments come after the new coalition Government put him in charge of the agency seven months ago as part of a mission to “reset” its operations.

It followed a review led by former Prime Minister Sir Bill English that found the agency’s debt had jumped from $2.7b in 2018 to $12.3b by June 2023, and was set to increase to $23b by 2028.

The Herald also revealed how the agency spent $11m to build the three, three-bedroom and six two-bedroom apartments in the Meadowbank complex.

Mark Todd, co-founder of developer Ockham Residential, said the Meadowbank project’s cost-per-apartment highlighted the agency’s “incompetence and lack of expertise”.

He called Kāinga Ora’s record of running up billions of dollars in debt a “scandal”.

Kāinga Ora was criticised after apartments in this Meadowbank cost $1.2 million each. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Speaking on Thursday, Crockett said the agency was focused on running a leaner operation.

That included concentrating on being a good but “firm” landlord in future and maintaining, refurbishing or rebuilding its existing supply of houses.

There were already about 2200 homes planned to be built through to June 2026.

That should take the agency’s total stock of homes to 78,000 and Kāinga Ora would look to keep the stock at that level, Crockett said.

The Meadowbank complex's ground-floor apartments included accessible bathrooms. Photo / Sylvie Whinray

That called into question what fate awaited hundreds of Kāinga Ora projects after the Government last July announced 371 had been put under review despite $300m being spent on them.

When asked about the projects and, in particular, a 139-Auckland apartment complex next to Avondale Racecourse that was put under review despite $24m being spent on it, Crockett said he expected answers by the middle of the year.

“We’re very close to getting to the end of the review of those projects,” he said.

“[We’ll] be able to confirm either: are they progressing, are we going to rework them to do something differently, or are we going to can them and maybe return that land back into into the market.”