The Government will today present a new package to local authorities on how to divvy up the billions it will take to repair thousands of leaky buildings.
Insiders say it will be "considerably more generous" than the offer the Government made before Christmas.
That offer was rejected by mayors.
At that time it proposed homeowners should pay 65%, with councils paying 25% and the Government 10%.
Details will be announced this afternoon by Prime Minister John Key and Buildings and Construction Minister Maurice Williamson.
It is a pre-Budget announcement, suggesting that it is a done deal with Thursday's Budget sewn up already.
"We are putting our best cards on the table and we hope mayors will come to the party," a Government source said last night.
Auckland Mayor John Banks and Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast will be briefed at the Beehive shortly before the public announcement.
The two mayors represent a wider group of mayors whose cities are worst affected by the problem: Auckland, Waitakere, North Shore, Tauranga, Wellington, and Christchurch.
Mr Banks would not comment last night other than to say that he and Ms Prendergast had been negotiating the deal hard for 12 months.
"There has been a lot of work gone into this and we are very pleased that the Government has engaged with local government through Kerry and myself."
The package is expected to apply to leaky homes built between 1992 and 2005.
It is not clear whether the Government's cost will be in low-interest loans or outright grants but it is said to be different in structure from its last offer.
That involved councils contributing a fixed percentage sum to the repair costs and the Government underwriting the remainder as a bank loan with subsidised interest rates.
A condition of any package is expected to be that leaky home owners accepting help would not be able to sue their council.
Alternatively, affected owners could continue to use present options including the Weathertight Homes Tribunal run by the Ministry of Justice, or the High Court.
According to a Government-commissioned report last year on the extent of the problem, only 3500 homes had been fixed and 9000 affected homes were already outside the 10-year limitation period for legal liability - beyond which owners are responsible.
It was likely that 30,000 dwellings had already failed but not been repaired, or would fail within the 10-year limitation period.
The same report, by Price-WaterhouseCoopers, estimated the number of homes affected to be between 22,000 and 89,000 but settled on a "consensus" figure of 42,000 failures with a repair bill of $11.3 billion.
Industry experts later disputed the conclusions, arguing the figures of 89,000 leaky homes was more likely with a total repair bill of $23 billion.
