There was much fanfare today around the latest Kiwibuild project, 25 apartments in Onehunga.

Stylish, architecturally designed apartments, we’re told. Actually, the photos looked okay.

Priced from $380,000 to $600,000, and first home buyers can enter the ballot from next week.

Phil Twyford was so excited he said, “it offered an attractive opportunity for first home buyers”.

He said, “it was a unique opportunity for those who have been locked out of the property market to buy a modern, new home in an increasingly popular area that might otherwise have been out of reach for first home buyers”.

Just a few observations.

These are apartments that, I believe, would have been built anyway. The taxpayer is underwriting the project. If they are not sold, the developer won’t carry the cost, that’s the way I see it. We will.

Any young person who is thinking about buying one of these should get advice. There will be body corporate costs as well, surely in the many thousands.

And in the fine print – and I only found this out a little while ago. I had to go digging for this – well, my producer did.

In the fine print, it says that Kiwibuild apartments exclude car park – a car park can be purchased as an option for $45,000 each. Or you can get a three year lease for $3,375 per annum.

Remember, we’re talking about young people who can’t afford to get onto the property ladder here.

Let’s look at the detail that was missing from the stories and the PR hype today.

So the size of these stylish, architecturally designed apartments – let’s go through them.

A studio at a very generous 39 square metres. But there’s a bonus – you get a 3.3 square metre balcony. That’s about one a half steps one way and two steps the other way.

A one bed is 50 square metres with seven square metres of balcony - or you can upscale to the two bedder at 59 square metres, with a very generous 10 square metre of balcony.

The point is these are very, very small apartments. And it’s not like there’s not a lot of these types of apartments on the market, because let me tell you there are hundreds, Mr Twyford, hundreds!

I don’t know how these things in Onehunga will turn out, but what we have seen with apartment blocks before that are marketed as architecturally designed, is that a lot of them, frankly, are junk.

You just have to drive around the inner city, it’s not hard to miss.

And the next question is this. Where are house prices or apartment prices going for the next few years? Who knows! The insane house prices are surely due for a correction.

All I’m saying is: be careful, buyer beware, and don’t get sucked in by the spin.