Cooking The Books

Each week the NZ Herald's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's the ultimate guide to what first home buyers need to know to improve their chance at getting on the property ladder. Hosted by Frances Cook. If you're a first home buyer, you need all the help you can get, and the good news is that you've just got access to a little bit more of it. The Government has announced it's making changes to the First Home Loan scheme, which means far more people could qualify to only put down a 5% deposit on a house.  Considering that scraping together a deposit is often the hard part, that's a pretty big deal.  They're also changing how you qualify for First Home Grants, meaning more people could qualify for a boost to their deposit of up to $10,000.  This will be welcome news for many people. Sure, it's always been hard to buy a house, but it's particularly hard now.  The latest figures from CoreLogic show that the share of houses being bought by first home buyers