How long until you can buy your first home?
Most first home calculators tell you what your deposit is worth today. That is not the question you are actually asking. The question is when, and the honest answer depends on something that keeps moving while you save.
House prices do not sit still and wait for you. If you need a 20% deposit on a $750,000 house, that is $150,000 today. If prices rise 4% a year and it takes you eight years to get there, the deposit you actually need is closer to $205,000. You are chasing a target that runs away from you, and how fast it runs is the single biggest thing that decides whether you get there at all.
This calculator models that race. It projects your KiwiSaver and your other savings forward year by year, grows the house price alongside them, and tells you the year the two lines cross. Sometimes they never do, and it says so.
Change the purple cells only. Everything else works itself out.
Why KiwiSaver needs its own calculator
A straight savings calculator cannot handle KiwiSaver, because your balance does not grow from your own contributions alone.
Your employer contributes too. From 1 April 2026 the minimum is 3.5% of your pay, rising to 4% from 1 April 2028. But you do not receive all of it. Employer contributions are taxed (ESCT) before they land in your account, at a rate set by your income. This calculator applies that tax properly, which is why two people earning $80,000 each end up with more than one person earning $160,000.
The government contributes as well, though far less than it used to. You get 25 cents for every dollar you put in, up to $260.72 a year. That halved on 1 July 2025 - it used to be $521. If you earn over $180,000 you now get nothing at all.
And you cannot use all of it. At least $1,000 has to stay in your account. If there are two of you buying together, that is $2,000 you cannot touch.
Put those three together and a generic savings calculator will be wrong in both directions at once. This one handles them.
What the calculator does
Projects your KiwiSaver 40 years forward, with employer contributions, ESCT, and the government contribution
Tracks your savings outside KiwiSaver separately
Grows the house price and the deposit you need, year by year
Tells you the year you get there, or tells you that you never do
Shows what happens across a range of house price growth rates, from three points below your assumption to three above
Works out what you would need to save each month to get there sooner
Handles a single buyer or a couple, with separate income and contribution details for each of you
The chart shows the whole thing at a glance: your deposit climbing, the deposit you need climbing too, and the point where you catch it.
The rules you need to know
Three years. You must have been a KiwiSaver member for at least three years. The clock runs from when you first enrolled, not from your first contribution, and it does not reset if you switch providers. Taking a savings suspension does not reset it either, as long as you were not suspended for the whole period.
$1,000 stays behind. You can withdraw everything above that.
It must be your first home, and you must intend to live in it. Not a rental, not a bach. If you have owned property before, you may still qualify if Kāinga Ora agrees you are in the same financial position as a first home buyer.
The property must be in New Zealand.
Once only. You cannot make a first home withdrawal twice.
Money transferred in from an Australian superannuation scheme cannot be withdrawn.
Apply through your KiwiSaver provider, not through Kāinga Ora. Allow two to three weeks.
The First Home Grant no longer exists
This one catches a lot of people, because a great deal of the internet has not caught up.
The First Home Grant was abolished on 22 May 2024 and has not been replaced. It used to pay up to $5,000 per person for an existing home or $10,000 for a new build. It is gone. If a website, a calculator or a broker is telling you how to apply for it, that page is out of date, and I found two pages on the same site contradicting each other while checking this.
The First Home Loan does still exist, and it matters more than the grant ever did. It lets eligible buyers purchase with a 5% deposit instead of 20%, underwritten by Kāinga Ora, without the interest rate premium that normally comes with a low-deposit mortgage. Income caps apply. Broadly $95,000 for a single buyer and $150,000 for two.
That single change is worth more than every other input in this calculator combined. On a $750,000 house, a 5% deposit is $37,500 instead of $150,000. Try it: change the deposit percentage in the calculator and watch the answer move by years. If you might qualify, find out before you spend another decade saving for a deposit you may not need.
If you are self-employed
The calculator has a self-employed toggle, and the results are worth looking at honestly.
Self-employed KiwiSaver members get no employer contribution and no automatic pay deduction. The government contribution is capped at $260.72 a year, which you collect by contributing $1,042.86. About $87 a month. Above that threshold there is no further incentive at all: no match, no top-up, just money locked away until you are 65.
So the rational thing is to contribute exactly the threshold and no more, and that is what most self-employed people do. It is also why the threshold has not moved since 2011 while the match itself was halved in 2025. The deal has quietly got worse.
Run the numbers and a self-employed person can easily end up with a third less KiwiSaver after ten years than an employee on the same income. That looks alarming, but it is only half the picture. Money you keep outside KiwiSaver is worth more per dollar for a deposit than money inside it: none of it is trapped behind the $1,000 minimum, none of it is locked until you buy, and you can redirect it if your plans change. A self-employed person saving $400 a month outside KiwiSaver and $87 inside it can land in much the same place as an employee doing the reverse.
The one thing that genuinely bites is the three-year clock. If you have opted out of KiwiSaver entirely (and plenty of self-employed people have, given the incentives), you are not three years from withdrawing, you are three years from being allowed to. Contributing $87 a month keeps the clock running for very little money, and that alone can be worth doing.
If you are buying with a partner
Use the toggle at the top and enter both sets of details. It matters more than you would think.
Two people means two KiwiSaver withdrawals, two lots of employer contributions, and two government contributions. It also means ESCT is worked out separately on each income, which is genuinely better than one person earning the same combined amount. Against that, $2,000 has to stay behind rather than $1,000.
Modelling a couple as a single person with a combined income will give you the wrong answer, which is why the calculator does not offer that shortcut.
What it does not do
It does not check whether you qualify for the First Home Loan, or model the loan itself
It does not model the mortgage, your repayments, or whether a bank will lend to you
It works in future dollars. A $205,000 deposit in eight years will not buy what $205,000 buys today
It assumes annual contributions and growth rather than each payday, so real figures will differ slightly
It assumes you both qualify and both withdraw everything you are allowed to
One assumption deserves a word of its own: your KiwiSaver return. The calculator uses whatever you enter, but a growth fund is usually the wrong place for money you need within three years. Most providers will suggest moving to something more conservative as you get close, and that lowers your return in the final stretch. If you are more than a decade away, a growth fund is probably right; if you are two years away, it probably is not. The calculator cannot switch for you, so consider running it twice.
The honest caveat
House price growth is the input that decides your answer, and nobody knows what it will be. That is why the calculator shows a range rather than a single date. On the default figures the answer moves from five years to nine depending on whether prices grow at 1% or 7%, and above a certain point the answer becomes "never", because the deposit grows faster than you can save.
If that is the answer you get, it is not a reason to give up. It is a reason to change something: a lower deposit percentage through the First Home Loan, a cheaper target, or more saved each month. The calculator will tell you exactly how much more.
Want help using it?
A calculator tells you what the numbers do. It can't tell you whether to buy at all, whether the house you're looking at is the right one, or what to do if the answer comes back "never".
If you'd like to talk it through with an independent, commission-free adviser, get in touch for a free 30 minute chat. No obligation.
Related calculators
How long to save for a house deposit — the same race without KiwiSaver in it, if your deposit is coming from ordinary savings.
Monthly savings needed for a house deposit — you've picked the date, this works backwards to the monthly figure.
KiwiSaver projections — the long view to 65, rather than the next few years.
Housing affordability — what your income actually supports, once you have the deposit.
Mortgage repayment calculator — what the loan costs once you've bought.