Each week the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB's Cooking the Books podcast tackles a different money problem. Today, it's why building could be what helps those with a small house-buying budget. Hosted by Frances Cook.

Houses are now so expensive, first home buyers are considering anything and everything to tip the scales in their favour.

One of the options you can consider is building. There's a financial incentive, for starters.

The KiwiSaver HomeStart grant doubles if you're planning to build. It's $5,000 for buying an existing home, and $10,000 if you're building a new one.

You can also have a bit more control over what type of house you buy. Maybe you can keep costs low by going for a smaller house on a smaller parcel of land, instead of the standard three bedroom Kiwi home.

But the issue is that as a first home buyer, by definition, you're new at this.

Building can be complicated, and there are more ways it can go wrong.

For the latest Cooking the Books podcast I talked to Kevin Atkinson from Generation Homes.

We discussed what first home buyers need to know before building, the trend for smaller homes, and the opposite strategy, of building bigger multi-generational homes.

If you have a question about this podcast, or question you'd like answered in the next one, come and talk to me about it. I'm on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/FrancesCookJournalist/ Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/francescooknz/ and Twitter here https://twitter.com/FrancesCook