Impact Investing Network Deep Dive - Home Capital Partners

Thank you to James Stewart (Chief Executive Director) and the team at Home Capital Partners for sharing their story. Our aim at the Impact Investing Network is to educate and connect the Impact Investing sector in Aotearoa, so we can channel capital towards innovative organisations like Home Capital Partners in order to make a positive impact in Aotearoa and globally.

Home Capital Partners is an impact-focused investment fund manager and part of the Home Foundation group – a collective united by our vision for a just housing system where quality homes enable flourishing communities.

When and why was Home Capital Partners founded? What inspired its focus on steward ownership as a vehicle for long-term mission alignment and values-driven governance?

Part of the Home Foundation group, Home Capital Partners was established in 2023 as an impact-focused investment fund manager, dedicated to addressing New Zealand’s housing crisis. By collaborating with Community Housing Providers (CHPs), councils, iwi, churches and other stakeholders, Home Capital Partners have been able to unlock social, affordable and mixed-tenure housing projects across Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our mission is to address New Zealand's housing crisis by using investment funds to create affordable, secure, and healthy housing solutions. We strive to build a future where everyone has a place to call home, ensuring the well-being and prosperity of our communities and providing significant economic and social impact along the way.

We form partnerships to invest in and develop mixed-tenure housing that increases available affordable and social housing across Aotearoa. We partner with Councils, Government, CHPs, Impact Investors, and Philanthropic Donors to deliver both social impact and financial returns.

What have been the key milestones in Home Capital Partners’ journey? Are there particular successes or challenges that could offer insights for housing agencies and investors in Aotearoa?

Home Capital Partners was established in 2023 as part of the Home Foundation group, with a clear mission: to use investment funds to unlock affordable, secure, and healthy housing for New Zealanders. Though still early in our journey, a number of milestones stand out that may offer useful insights for others in the housing and investment sectors.

Home Capital’s early journey shows that success lies in building trust-based partnerships, proving new financial models, and staying anchored to community outcomes. The challenges we’ve faced offer important lessons for anyone seeking to scale housing solutions across Aotearoa.

Key Milestones

• Establishment of an impact-focused investment platform: Creating a dedicated fund manager in Aotearoa solely focused on affordable housing, signalling that impact and financial returns can be aligned.

• Building a partnership ecosystem: Forming active collaborations with councils, iwi, churches, CHPs, philanthropic donors, and government, laying the groundwork for scalable, mixed-tenure housing projects.

• Structuring blended finance models: Demonstrating that by combining private capital with government subsidies and philanthropic contributions, projects once seen as “uninvestable” can become viable.

• Launch of The New Zealand Housing Fund - Te Piringa, our equity impact investment fund. This will see 267 homes delivered across the country and provide investors with forecast returns of 11.9% with approximately half of this as cash returns. ¾ of this fund is secured by government revenue contracts providing a lower risk, higher impact investment option.

Successes to Date

• Proof of concept: Showing that an impact investment approach resonates with both investors (who seek steady returns and measurable social outcomes) and communities (who seek security and wellbeing).

• Cross-sector buy-in: Early success in convening diverse stakeholders around shared outcomes, an achievement in a housing system that is often fragmented.

• Elevating CHPs’ role: Providing pathways for community housing providers to access capital and scale delivery beyond what government grants alone could support.

Challenges

• Navigating policy and subsidy frameworks: Complex and sometimes uneven access to subsidies like the Income-Related Rent Subsidy highlights the importance of government’s role in unlocking social outcomes through housing.

• Balancing speed and scale with community values: Investors often seek timely delivery, while iwi and community partners rightly prioritise long-term cultural and social outcomes. Building trust and co-design into investment structures has been critical.

• Market education: Demonstrating to mainstream investors that affordable and social housing can be both financially stable and socially impactful remains an ongoing challenge but one that is being steadily overcome with evidence and track record.

How does your investment model differ from traditional housing finance, and what makes it work specifically for community housing in NZ?

Traditional housing finance in New Zealand is geared toward market-rate development. It prioritises short-term returns, often relies on pre-sales, and assumes households can pay full market rents or mortgages. That model simply doesn’t work for community housing, where affordability and long-term stability matter as much as financial viability.

We bring together private investment, government subsidies (like Income-Related Rent Subsidy), iwi capital, and philanthropy into blended structures. This reduces risk, lowers financing costs, and makes projects bankable that traditional lenders would turn away.

Instead of treating housing as just an asset, we partner with iwi and community housing providers who bring deep relationships, cultural understanding, and wraparound support. This ensures homes are not only affordable but embedded in communities for the long term.

What makes this work in Aotearoa is the combination of impact capital with community-led delivery. Our model recognises the strengths of iwi and CHPs, leverages government support, and unlocks private capital that would otherwise stay on the sidelines. In doing so, we create a sustainable, scalable pathway to deliver housing that meets real need, not just market demand.

What role can impact investing play in building intergenerational wealth, stability, or wellbeing, particularly for Māori, Pasifika, and underserved communities?

From a community perspective, impact investing is about more than money—it’s about unlocking social dividends too. For Māori, Pasifika, and underserved communities, the role it can play is deeply impactful.

It can also support whānau into stable, affordable housing so tamariki grow up in secure homes, not temporary rentals. It can back papakāinga and community housing models where cultural identity and belonging are strengthened alongside shelter. It can finance community-led enterprises that generate jobs, pride, and prosperity, ensuring profits stay in the community rather than flowing out.

By giving communities a stake in ownership not just tenancy impact investing can help build wealth that endures across generations. It shifts people from surviving week to week to building a foundation of security and dignity. And most importantly, when capital is deployed in true partnership, it upholds tino rangatiratanga, ensuring Māori and Pasifika voices lead the design of their own futures.

From a finance perspective, impact investing can be a catalyst for building intergenerational wealth, stability, and wellbeing in underserved communities by addressing both capital gaps and structural inequities.

For Māori and Pasifika, asset ownership is central to intergenerational prosperity. Impact investment can structure capital into models like community housing funds, iwi-led developments, or co-operative enterprises that deliver both financial returns and social impact, ensuring wealth is retained locally.

Blended finance structures can overcome equity gaps by layering concessional or philanthropic capital to de-risk private investment making affordable housing and social enterprise bankable. Instruments such as social bonds, community land trusts, or shared equity schemes create scalable pathways for investors to participate in long-term, stable cashflows while delivering measurable outcomes in housing security, health, and cultural wellbeing.

Crucially, impact investing must shift decision-making power toward communities themselves, embedding kaupapa Māori and Pasifika worldviews in governance and design. By doing so, investors can align capital with values, achieve stable returns, and contribute to breaking cycles of precarity unlocking intergenerational wealth and wellbeing at scale.

What does a successful partnership look like for you—whether with investors, developers, iwi, or community housing providers?

For us, a successful partnership is one where values, purpose, and outcomes are aligned from the outset. Whether it’s with investors, developers, iwi, or community housing providers, success means working together in a way that is transparent, equitable, and focused on both long-term impact and financial sustainability.

• With investors, success looks like a shared commitment to stable returns and measurable social outcomes. They see housing not just as an asset class, but as a way to unlock dignity and opportunity for families while trusting us to deliver both scale and accountability.

  
  

• With developers, it means collaboration to design and deliver homes that are high-quality, affordable, and sustainable, with a clear pipeline that balances commercial viability with community need.

  
  

• With iwi, a successful partnership is built on tino rangatiratanga and respect for kaupapa Māori. It means co-designing solutions on whenua that reflect cultural values, support whānau aspirations, and build intergenerational wealth and stewardship.

  
  

• With community housing providers, success is about enabling them to grow by giving them access to capital, capacity, and partnerships they wouldn’t otherwise have. We want them to remain embedded in their communities, delivering wraparound support while scaling their housing impact.

  
  

At its core, a successful partnership means that each party brings their strengths, shares the risks, and celebrates the outcomes. It’s not transactional—it’s long-term, built on trust, and measured by the difference it makes in people’s lives.

What barriers still exist in scaling impact investment to address the scale of NZ’s housing need, and how might they be overcome?

The barriers are less about the absence of capital and more about structuring, scale, and confidence. By aligning policy, creating fit-for-purpose investment vehicles, and adopting transparent impact standards, New Zealand can unlock significantly more private capital to complement government efforts—and meaningfully shift the dial on housing supply and affordability.

What policy shifts or funding mechanisms would unlock greater capital flows into community housing in Aotearoa?

Aotearoa faces a persistent shortage of affordable, secure housing. Community housing providers (CHPs) play a crucial role in addressing this gap, but their ability to scale is constrained by limited access to capital. Several policy shifts and funding mechanisms could unlock greater investment:

Long-term Revenue Certainty for CHPs

Investors need stable income streams to commit capital. Currently, revenue support (such as the Income-Related Rent Subsidy) is less accessible to CHPs.

Policy shift: Extend consistent, long-term access to subsidies and housing payments for CHPs, ensuring their projects are financially bankable and attractive to private capital.

Blended Finance and Risk-sharing Models 

Private investors often hesitate due to perceived risks in affordable housing projects.

Mechanism: Create blended finance vehicles where government or philanthropic capital provides first-loss protection, guarantees, or concessional loans de-risking projects and drawing in institutional and retail investors.

Social and Affordable Housing Bonds

Globally, housing bonds (green, social, or sustainability-linked) have mobilised billions.

Mechanism: Establish a national housing bond programme potentially backed by government guarantees that channels capital directly into CHPs while offering investors a transparent, measurable social return.

Land and Planning Incentives

Access to affordable land is one of the biggest constraints.

Policy shift: Prioritise land release for CHPs through discounted or long-term leasehold arrangements on Crown, council, or iwi land, combined with fast-tracked consenting for community housing projects.

Standardised Impact Measurement Framework

Investors want assurance of measurable outcomes but lack standardised tools.

Policy shift: Develop a nationally recognised framework for reporting on affordability, health, and wellbeing outcomes of CHP housing, providing confidence and comparability for investors.

What’s next for Home Capital Partners? Are you exploring new asset classes, regions, or partnership models?

We’ve just launched our Impact Investment Housing Fund - Te Piringa which we believe provides inventors with an excellent balance of social impact and financial return delivering:

• Strong forecast financial returns 11.9% pa with 5.1% pa of this as cash over the first five years

• The majority of revenues underpinned by government contracts 

• Additional security stemming from the calibre of the CHP partners

• No construction or development risk 

• Liquidity options for those needing an exit window after five years

• Cornerstone investment (up to 70%) from the Home Foundation 

What would success look like in five years for Home Capital, your partners, and the communities you serve?

For Home Capital Partners, success means proving that housing can be both investable and transformational. In five years, we aim to be recognised as Aotearoa’s leading impact investment platform for housing mobilising significant private capital alongside government, iwi, and philanthropy to deliver affordable, high-quality homes at scale. We’ll have demonstrated stable financial returns while showing that investment can directly improve lives.

For our partners, iwi, community housing providers, developers, and investors, success means strong, enduring collaborations where each brings their strengths. CHPs will have the certainty and capital they need to grow, iwi partners will see housing aligned with their whenua and kaupapa, and investors will have a proven model for achieving both financial and social returns.

For the communities we serve, success is measured in dignity, security, and opportunity. Thousands of whānau will be living in affordable, healthy homes that they can rely on long term. For Māori and Pasifika families, this will include models of ownership or stewardship that build intergenerational wealth and stability. Children will be thriving in schools because they’re not being shifted from house to house, and communities will be stronger because housing has been designed with cultural identity, wellbeing, and sustainability at its heart.

In short: success in five years means that Home Capital Partners are no longer just proving the concept of impact investing in housing, we’re scaling it. Investors, partners, and communities will all see the tangible benefits of a system where capital serves people, and where housing is treated not as a commodity, but as a foundation for intergenerational wellbeing.