A guide for first home buyers — Aotearoa New Zealand
Blueprint for
your first home.
Find out exactly how much you can afford for your first home — and how you can get paid $5,000+ to do it.
In under 5 minutes, get an accurate, personalised estimate of your borrowing power and purchase price. This guide also walks you through the path to settlement, the terms you'll hear along the way, and a checklist for the home stretch — so you can move forward with confidence.
Sequence
The path to settlement
SHEET 01 / 05
Buying is a strict order of operations. Skipping ahead — making an offer before you know your real deposit, for instance — is where most of the stress comes from. Read it once in order before you start.
Check your KiwiSaver
Log into your provider and see your balance. If you've been a member 3+ years, most of it (minus a $1,000 balance you must leave in) can go toward a first home. Joint buyers can combine both KiwiSavers.
Work out your real deposit
Your deposit is savings + KiwiSaver withdrawal + any gifted deposit. Standard owner-occupier lending wants 20% down; new builds can go lower; the Kāinga Ora First Home Loan can allow as little as 5% if you qualify. See Run the Numbers to work out your full deposit and purchasing power.
Get pre-approved
A mortgage adviser assesses your income, debts, and deposit, and helps arrange a conditional pre-approval — usually valid 60–90 days. This is also where they assess how much of your income is already committed to other debt before working out how much a lender will offer — see Run the Numbers for a version of that sum you can run yourself.
House hunt, with paperwork in hand
Before you fall for a place, know what to ask for: a LIM report (council records — consents, drainage, hazards), a builder's report, the title, and — for apartments or townhouses — the body corporate documents and levies.
Make a conditional offer
Put your offer in with conditions attached — finance, building report, LIM, sometimes a lawyer's review. Conditions are your exit ramps if something turns up you don't like.
Go unconditional
Once your conditions are satisfied (finance confirmed, reports clean), you and the vendor sign off and the agreement becomes binding. This is the point of no easy return — don't rush it.
Settlement
Your lawyer or conveyancer transfers the funds and the title changes hands. This is also when your KiwiSaver withdrawal and any Kāinga Ora First Home Loan funds are released — apply for these ahead of time, they take weeks, not days.
Keys
Settlement day, once funds clear — usually early afternoon. It's yours.
NOT FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE
VERIFY WITH YOUR ADVISER
Serviceability & deposit
Run the numbers
SHEET 02 / 05
Enter your income, expenses, debts and deposit to estimate your maximum purchase price.
Household & income
Tell us who's applying and how much comes in. We convert everything to a net monthly figure.
Your income
$
Boarder/flatmate income (optional)
$
/wk
Applicant income (monthly, net)$0
Boarder/flatmate income (monthly)$0
Combined net income (monthly)$0
Household expenses
Enter your typical monthly spend. If your total comes in under a sensible baseline, we use the baseline instead.
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
$
Entered expenses (monthly)$0
Baseline floor (household + dependants)$0
Region insurance (lower-quartile est.)$0
Region rates (lower-quartile est.)$0
Serviceability buffer$0
Assessed monthly expenses$0
Regional insurance and rates are illustrative lower-quartile estimates for an entry-level home — confirm with an insurer and the local council.
Existing debts
Total limits and repayments across all facilities of each type. Revolving credit (cards, BNPL) is assessed at the higher of your repayment or 3% of the limit.
LimitRepayment /mth
Credit cards
$
$
BNPL (Afterpay, etc.)
$
$
Car loan(s)
$
$
Personal loan(s)
$
$
Cards assessed$0
BNPL assessed$0
Car loan(s)$0
Personal loan(s)$0
Total assessed commitments$0
Deposit
Your deposit sets the other side of the equation: how much a lender will lend relative to the property's value.
$
$
$
Total deposit$54,000
Combined before-tax household income$0
First Home Loan eligibility (income test)—
Minimum deposit applicable10%
Max price this deposit supports$0
Estimated maximum purchase price
Two ceilings apply at once: what you can service (income less expenses less debts) and what your deposit supports at the applicable LVR. Your actual limit is the lower of the two.
Maximum purchase price
$0
Limited by serviceability
First Home Buyer cashback offer
Arranged by Guardian Smith, paid by your lender at settlement.*
$5,000–$10,000+
Want to know what this actually looks like for you?
Start your journey to home ownership — no cost, no obligation.There's no surplus left after expenses and debts at these numbers — a mortgage isn't serviceable yet on this input. Reducing debt or expenses, or increasing income, will move this.
Illustrative only. Real assessments vary by lender and consider other factors (credit history, employment type, existing mortgages). Confirm your real capacity with a mortgage adviser. *Eligibility criteria applies to cashback.
SERVICEABILITY ESTIMATE — NOT A LOAN APPROVAL
The full picture
How much will your home actually cost you
SHEET 03 / 05
Beyond the purchase price, there's what you'll repay each week and what lands as cash before or at settlement. Both matter for working out what you can really afford.
Mortgage repayments
Estimate repayments on a loan amount at a given rate and term.
$
Estimated repayment$0
Rates and lending rules move. Treat this as a talking-point estimate, not a formal loan quote.
Typical costs before settlement
Indicative ranges for a standard existing-home purchase — your own quotes will vary.
- Registered valuation (if your lender requires one)$800–$1,200
- Builder's report$400–$800
- LIM report$300–$450
- Legal / conveyancing fees Often paid at settlement using a portion of your cashback$2,500–$3,500
- Rates adjustment (pro-rata reimbursement to vendor)$200–$800
Typical total
$4,200–$6,750
A registered valuation is only sometimes required — many low-deposit or new-build lending scenarios call for one specifically. Legal fees in particular are commonly settled on the day using part of your cashback, rather than needing to come from your own cash upfront.
Moving in
The costs that land in the weeks around the move itself, separate from the legal settlement process.
- Removalists or van hire$300–$1,500
- Power, gas & broadband connection$50–$250
- Locks, keys & initial repairs/cleaning$100–$500
Typical total
$450–$2,250
Optional and highly variable depending on distance moved, how much you own, and the condition of the property. Budget on the higher end if you're moving cities or buying a place that needs immediate work.
INDICATIVE RANGES — GET ACTUAL QUOTES BEFORE SETTLEMENT
Mortgage jargon made simple
Terms worth knowing
SHEET 04 / 05
The vocabulary everyone in the transaction assumes you already speak.
- LVR
- Loan-to-Value Ratio. The size of your loan compared to the property's value. A 20% deposit means an 80% LVR.
- First Home Loan
- A Kāinga Ora–backed loan through participating lenders that can lower the deposit needed to around 5% for eligible buyers. Core criteria: before-tax income under $95,000 for one borrower, or $150,000 for two or more borrowers (or a single borrower with dependants); a genuine intention to live in the home; regional house price caps apply; and normal serviceability and credit checks still apply — best confirmed with a mortgage adviser.
- KiwiSaver first-home withdrawal
- Taking most of your own KiwiSaver balance out to put toward a first home, after 3+ years of membership.
- LIM report
- Land Information Memorandum — a council-issued report on consents, rates, drainage, and known hazards for a specific property.
- Builder's report
- An independent building inspection flagging defects, moisture, and maintenance issues before you commit.
- Body corporate
- The collective of owners in a unit-titled building (apartments, some townhouses) who jointly manage and pay for shared areas.
- Freehold / Unit title / Cross lease
- Three ways NZ land ownership is structured. Freehold is full ownership of land and building; unit title is common in apartments; cross lease shares land ownership with neighbours under a leasehold-style arrangement — each affects what you can alter and how disputes are resolved.
- Conditional / unconditional offer
- Conditional: your offer has escape clauses (finance, inspection, LIM). Unconditional: those conditions are met or waived and the deal is locked in.
- Settlement
- The day money and title actually change hands — usually a few weeks after going unconditional.
- Retention
- An agreed amount held back from the purchase price at settlement until the vendor fixes an agreed issue.
- Chattels
- Items included in the sale beyond the building itself — think oven, drapes, heat pump, light fittings.
- CV / RV
- Capital Value / Rateable Value — the council's valuation used for rates, not necessarily what the property sells for.
- Cashback
- A lump sum some lenders pay when you take out a new home loan with them, typically around 0.5%–1% of the loan. Usually has a claw-back clause if you refinance elsewhere within a few years. First home buyers arranged through Guardian Smith are backed by at least $5,000 of this cashback at settlement — see Run the Numbers.*
- Fixed interest rate
- Your rate is locked in for a set period — commonly 6 months to 5 years — so repayments stay the same for that term regardless of what happens in the market. Usually comes with break fees if you repay early or switch rates before the term ends.
- Floating interest rate
- Also called variable. The rate can move up or down at any time, giving you flexibility — extra repayments, refixing, selling — without break fees, but less certainty over what you'll pay from month to month.
- Live deal
- A lender's current special offer — a temporarily discounted rate, cashback, or other incentive available for a limited time. What's "live" changes often, so it's worth checking with a mortgage adviser rather than relying on an old rate you've seen advertised.
- Pre-approval
- A conditional, time-limited confirmation from a lender of roughly how much they'd lend you, before you've found a property.
- Sale and Purchase Agreement (S&P)
- The legal contract for the transaction — read every clause before you sign, ideally with a lawyer.
PLAIN-LANGUAGE SUMMARIES — NOT LEGAL DEFINITIONS
ASK YOUR LAWYER FOR SPECIFICS
Complete home buying checklist
Before you sign anything
SHEET 05 / 05
Tick things off as you go on this page, or download a printable copy to keep with your paperwork.
Download PDF checklist
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Before you start looking
While house hunting
Making an offer
Before settlement
Settlement day
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SESSION ONLY — NOT SAVED