An empty Housing New Zealand house is for sale in Milton, the fifth house in the town the government department has tried to sell under the first-home ownership scheme, FirstHome.
Houses offered under the scheme are taken off the market if they do not sell and put on the open market or divested through a tenant ownership scheme.
Only one of the five Milton properties Housing New Zealand has tried to sell through the FirstHome scheme has so far sold through the scheme.
Two ended up selling on the open market, and a third is under conditional contract.
The scheme is aimed at helping people with modest incomes to buy their own home, by offering a grant of up to $20,000 for first-time buyers.
Proceeds from the sale of surplus properties are reinvested in housing.
Housing New Zealand tenancy services area manager Kate Milton said houses offered under the scheme were generally in areas of low demand or were not the right kind of property to meet the area's demand.
The house for sale at present in Milton had been untenanted for about five months.
Any low uptake of properties could be due to various reasons, such as there being no qualifying FirstHome applicants in the area or the availability of affordable housing for first-home buyers in the area.
The FirstHome scheme began nationwide in October 2013, and more than $2.52million in FirstHome grants had been paid out to buyers.
By mid-September 243 houses had been sold under the scheme, the highest number of sales, 56, being in Wanganui.
In the South, Dunedin led the way, with 16 sales so far.
Invercargill and Gore had a combined 12 sales.
There had been one sale each in Central Otago and Balclutha as well as the sale in Milton.
Housing New Zealand has 13 tenanted properties in Milton.
