A property commentator says there is a fundamental issue in how the Government has implemented KiwiBuild.

This follows the release of documents which suggest KiwiBuld targets fell off the rails in the space of just one month

It was all running smoothly in October - with forecasts predicting 627 homes were likely to be built by July, with 430 already in the works. 

However, documents obtained by Newshub reveal the forecast crashed to 347 the next month.

Texts between Housing Minister Phil Twyford and former KiwiBuild head Stephen Barclay show concerns were raised as far back as August. 

Property commentator, Ashley Church told Mike Hosking the documents suggest they hadn't finalised the details when they made their predictions.

"Those numbers that they released in October, the 627 homes that were supposed to be built by July...those were based on some pretty spurious indications of how and where those houses would be built."

"They basically took conversations with developers and quoted those as numbers. When Barclay disappeared, whoever came in obviously took a much more methodical approach and said, 'hey most of these aren't actually real, the real number is actual 347' and that's why there is a difference between the two numbers."

"So it's an indication of pressure," he said. 

Church said he has a lot of sympathy for Phil Twyford because he has very little control over something he is "totally responsible for".

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"The Government, through him as a minister set the targets...from that point onward he has no say as to who gets employed in that role...he has no ability to have an input into the process...but he's totally responsible."

"Nonetheless this thing [KiwiBuild] has fallen over, it's fallen over spectacularly and somewhere along the line we have to fund out...why that happened and actually input this thing back on track."

When asked whether he thought it could be put back on track, he said the project has been plagued with issues from the start. 

"The fundamental issue here really is the basis on which this programme was put in place in the first place...basically the Government wanted to act as the lead developer so it was always going to be fraught with the problems we have got here."

"You've got this whole process of Chinese Whispers where you're looking for somebody to indicate that they might build something, that may or may not go ahead."

"When if they basically put this thing to the private sector and said, 'here's the parameters, here's what we want but you guys do it in a normal commercial environment', I think they would be sitting at their 1000 now and getting towards those numbers over the next five to 10 years, but that is simply not going to happen the way the policy is currently constructed."