An affordable housing development in Queenstown will be based on an ownership model believed to be a New Zealand first.
The Queenstown Lakes Community Housing Trust expects to begin building 14 homes on a greenfield site near Onslow Rd, bordering Lake Hayes Estate, next June.
The development will be the trust's first under its ``Secure Home'' programme, which is based on successful schemes in Whistler, Colorado, and elsewhere.
The trust's executive officer, Julie Scott, said it would design and build the homes before selling them to eligible households on its waiting list.
The homeowners would lease the land underneath their homes from the trust in perpetuity, paying rent of about $6000 a year.
The rental would provide a ``very low return'' on the land from the trust's perspective, but would enable the homeowners to buy the homes with a mortgage that was affordable.
``We don't want them spending more than 35% of their gross income on mortgage repayments and the lease.''
In the future, the homes could only be bought and sold in a controlled market where any increases in value were limited to the rate of inflation.
Ms Scott said the homes were likely to be a mixture of duplexes and stand-alone dwellings.
``We hope to finalise details of the programme in the New Year and get people signed up to them early next year.
``It would be great if we could get people in by next Christmas, but it could be early 2019.''
The sections are part of the 21-section Onslow Rd special housing area (SHA) approved by the Queenstown Lakes District Council in 2015.
Owner Scott Crawford later sold the site to the Sanderson Group, which is developing part of its vast Queenstown Country Club retirement village on an adjacent site.
Ms Scott said the trust received one section when the SHA was first negotiated with the council, and was gifted 13 more by the Sanderson Group as a condition of council approval for the retirement village, which is also an SHA.
She understood the Sanderson Group would build staff accommodation on the remaining seven sections on the site.
The development is the trust's seventh: it has built 27 housing units in Lake Hayes Estate, 10 in Arrowtown, 44 in Shotover Country, and 12 in Albert Town's Riverside Park.
It is now working on two smaller developments: two homes in Wanaka's Northlake subdivison, and six more in Shotover Country.
