Controversy evolved from the sale of 10 Kiwibuild houses in Wanaka which failed to fully sell out.

It's been suggested the Government might be better off using some of its KiwiBuild houses for social housing and rentals, as its opponents ramp up criticism of the building programme.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub says the number of first home buyers who could afford to buy one of the 100,000 houses that KiwiBuild hopes to build over a decade, were slim.

"You have to have the deposit and you have to have the income to repay the mortgage. We knew this was always going to be a problem, particularly in the expensive areas."

He said either the Government needed to lower the cost of entry or put the houses to some other use.

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It could supplement the housing supply by providing new rental housing or more social housing outside state housing.

"At the moment there is no one who can really do that, but if the Government says we're in the market to essentially procure X thousand units of 'build to rents,' and we're going to underwrite the rent at some kind of indexation, the stuff would be built."

STUFF In Wellington, the Government has announced 44 apartments in a Mt Cook apartment block will be sold through Kiwibuild.

He said Wellington City Council had already taken that lead by announcing last week that it would partner with private owners to provide 350 rent-controlled apartments with multi-year lease options.

Eaqub sad it made sense for the Government to underwrite rental housing. The accommodation supplement was a huge cost, and if those on the supplement were put into inflation-indexed government rentals, it could gain some control over those costs.

"These are the kind of programmes they'll have to do if they really want to increase housing supply and reduce this uncertainty of who's going to be the end buyer. We don't have institutional landlords in New Zealand yet."

Housing Minister Phil Twyford has said he is looking at the possibility of shared equity programmes to assist people into homes.

The Government has always maintained that increasing the housing supply through KiwiBuild would effectively reduce competition for housing and bring down the price.

In doing so, it was also combating the problem of developers not building for the affordable end of the market. Twyford maintains that by underwriting or buying affordable KiwiBuild homes off the plan, it is reducing the risk and speeding up housing developments.

But ACT leader David Seymour said on Monday that was just shifting the deck chairs.

JOSEPH KELLY/STUFF Shamubeel Eaqub says it makes sense for the Govenrment to start underwriting rental housing outside the state housing system.

"Phil Twyford is going around buying properties that would have been built by the private sector anyway, slapping a KiwiBuild sticker on them, subsidising them, and flicking them on to first homebuyers.

"The Housing Minister is absolutely right when he says that a greater supply of homes will solve the housing crisis.

"But he must act accordingly by fundamentally reforming the Resource Management Act so the private sector can get on with the job of building them.

"KiwiBuild is just a $2 billion marketing gimmick."