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Warning: This is a self memoir that digs deep into the way I think. You could be left thinking this is a dangerous foray into the psychology of a disturbed mind. Or you might deduce it’s a load of self indulgent garbage. Regardless, I hope there are at least a couple of illuminating points. Strap yourself in!

Today, two years ago, Tuesday, September 1, 2020, I was privileged to take over as Chief Executive Officer for Universal Homes.

The previous CEO -who announced his retirement some 6 months earlier- had held the position for 32 years out of his 42 years at Universal homes. That’s some sort of record I’m picking for a non-founder to run a property development and home-building business.

So filling his well-honed shoes, came with well just a teeny bit of PRESSURE.

And my inaugural week couldn’t have come at a better time.

Sunday, was the last day of the second Covid lockdown. Monday, the day prior to my official start, my predecessor let me take CEO reigns on a legal dispute a day early. Thus, I spent 13 hours in a mediation with a contractor and lawyers and consultants. As far as I am concerned the claim was frivolous and we won that day, but it was about 11 hours of stress before we had negotiated ourselves to a $ position where I prearranged board approval to compromise. It was pure pain. And I learned that mediation is a waste of time. Best to go straight to a ruling from someone independent rather than battle on logic for months with lawyers going back and forth, but still on the day have to compromise, illogically, just to get a deal across the line and pay a ton of legal fees.

Day One. Hi everyone, welcome back to the office after a pandemic induced holiday…I mean work from home. Ah and welcome to all your new positions as this is the first effective day of the company restructure.

Day Three, we were negotiating a massive funding line extension with our local banking partner. Now, this turned out to be relatively simple, with a great CFO holding the reigns, but I didn’t know that in advance, nor had I been responsible for anything like that in the past. .

Day Five, conclude the negotiations (that had been going on for six months) for a OIO extension for our flagship billion-dollar development.

And all week long thinking, how is this market going to implode now the island nation is closed off.

Well, it turned out that September went on to become our best selling month in a generation – aided by a substantial homes completed and unsold portfolio from 2019. The good times continued with January 2021 breaking that record again as we launched 150 homes across West Hills stage 2 and Hobsonville BB15 to the market.

By then one year fixed mortgage had almost dropped to 2%. Inflation, sminflation.

The CEO honeymoon period, in full rose coloured sun glasses, better than anyone in the business could ever expect.

Then the Auckland lockdown/smackdown in the second half of 2021 heralded in a supply chain mess, and delays to everything conceivable. By the end of the year we had over 100 homes complete, waiting for settlement without titles, that never arrived before Xmas – because apparently it takes weeks longer to process them from home. December means something to us, because our financial year is the calendar year, so a very rosy outlook ended up mediocre (in financial year terms, not in property development terms!). Not my fault, but I still got the hard word from upstairs not to allow another lockdown to slow the New Zealand property industry down!

Newlyweds holiday in the sun over. Dark clouds on the horizon. Santa, with his sleigh stuck in some container in a Shenzhen port shutdown by infected elves, trying to export toys to the North Pole, still managed to deliver a bumper Christmas hamper: a gouging series of price rises to every construction related good and service you could imagine.

I N F L A T I O N

And then the summer sales market stopped. It didn’t slow down. By March it had stopped.

Since then the 2022 autumn of anguish and the winter of withering have run according to one hell of an evil algorithm:

>Double fixed term interest rates, and concurrently,
>Eliminate banks’ ability to make reasonable lending decisions, and concurrently,
>Confuse the nation on who should work from home or not, and concurrently,
>Run out of Gib Board, and concurrently,
>Strangle international shipping lanes, and concurrently,
>Introduce all sorts of legislation that increase costs, and concurrently,
>Crash the sales market, and concurrently,
> Get the media to put the fear of overpaying into the hearts and minds of the sheeple, and concurrently,
>Add hyperinflation, and concurrently,
>Foster the Great Resignation, and concurrently,
>Forget to add incentives for immigration – so there is practically none and concurrently
>……well you get the idea.

So in two years, we went from one extreme to the other (albeit who knows if we are at the tail of this end yet.)

Good times.

Still I refereed a decision to proceed with another 90 homes at Northcote, without a presale, with bad soil underneath requiring expensive piling, with a bit of faith in negotiations with our land partner on the basis that we should be out of this mess by the time of completion at end 2023 right?

Starting future projects will be entail some interesting decisions. No one in the industry can deny that, regardless what their PR departments claim. At least we don’t need pre-sales to start construction. Funding for those off-the-plan developments as all but dried up.

Enough moaning already. The pendulum goes both ways. We didn’t buy much land in 2021, meaning we didn’t overpay too much land. It was a feeding frenzy for developable land. Thankfully our slow, mammoth report writing, multiple approval land acquisition purchase process basically meant we couldn’t compete with all those other developers keen to throw caution and their funders wallets to the wind. Plus we had already decided after missing out on yet another tender, a company hiatus on fixed price construction contracts. Building for others has only been a small part of our business, but by fluke this decision meant we weren’t forced to deliver any construction projects to other developers at an inflation induced loss.

The opportunity now then is to buy some land. The tide has well and truly gone out and the water temperature ice cold. It’s time to don a steamer suit, wade past the beached remains of others partially completed projects, and go spear fishing whatever species of feasibility can still swim.

Over the last two years, here’s what I have discovered since my appointment to the pilots seat.

One. When I reported to the CEO I had one boss, now I report to a board and have three official bosses, plus about ten sub-bosses, that boss me. And occasionally some or all of them are bossed by someone up their food chain which turns into some directive that effectively bosses me. Regardless, of which boss or directive I potentially could blame, as the Director on the ground I am effectively solely responsible and accountable for everything that happens in New Zealand. Buck stops here, like it or not. But all this does make for animated discussions most days between me and all the bosses I can tell you!

Two. Most of my time is trying to prevent or minimise ideas or initiatives from the bosses ending up doing the exact opposite of what the bosses intend. That’s a key part of the CEO (they say in books), take the hit and protect those you serve – your employees. Not easy. The bosses of the roundtable like to be ‘interactive’. They often have the right strategic idea, but putting it into practice is not always, well, practical. It’s a constant education process upwards. And it takes half the team collaborating to help me with that.

Three. Whilst I am not a founder of the company, I am passionate about property development and treat the company like I 100% own it – primarily to grow it. The bosses want that as well. Unfortunately, I have a tendency to treat anything that gets in the way of us developing more houses as a personal threat. Not so much from competitors -the successful ones are to admire and to learn from. Whether from bureaucracy or market forces, I soldier up to go into combat. I was given some words of wisdom, early on: “don’t try and fight every battle”. I’m still learning that, failing miserably.

Four. It’s all about the people, I’m here for the people, your role as CEO (the social media gurus constantly remind us) is to serve your employees – that’s number one. Employees first, customers second, shareholders third. Happy employees, happy customers, happy shareholders. This is all a worthy aim. Of course how you veritably do that isn’t telegraphed in The Idiots’ Guide to Being a CEO with a Board, subject to all sorts of rules, Leglislated Across Two Continents, that Answers to Shareholders in a Very Financially Focussed Manner, Every New Year’s Eve.” Assuming, one day I manage to find (or write) that book, the thing about employees is that, like me, they are people.

People are different. They want different things. They are of different ages. They are from different places. They grew up with different attitudes and ideas. They have different ambitions, talents, and social constructs. They differ in decisiveness, risk acceptance or avoidance, experience, enthusiasm, and cynicism. They value different approaches to utilitarianism, altruism, and their use of euphemism. They have different personalities, different pressure points, different squares on the Myers-Briggs, and different ways of dealing with conflict.

It’s inevitable then that everyone is not always on the same page. Of course, we have to all work together. And we have to work together productively, and profitably. When this doesn’t happen naturally it does get me worked up. It’s the least desired part of my role: me having to come in and be last resort to try and mend a working relationship. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, and people leave. That’s fine. They say people leave managers not jobs. That’s a little disputable in this current labour-constrained market where some people are simply moving to the higher bidder. But no doubt often there is some truth in it. Whilst as CEO I have not yet had to initiate anyone’s replacement (no Donald Trump firings on my watch!) everyone is replaceable, including -especially- myself! The good news when someone leaves is it provides an opportunity for someone else to step up. Or it provides the business to retest its course and direction in whatever field that person worked in.

For those that do drink the company cool-aid and those whom I hope don’t buy into this ‘quiet quitting’ nonsense, I am there for them 100%. They get 100% honesty from me. Yes I expect performance through best effort and leaving few stones unturned when difficulties arise. If the resource is an issue then go find the resource! If something ain’t working then go try six other options! If something needs to be improved, well after you gasp and moan, go do some work and propose some solutions to whomever you report to. If that doesn’t work tell me. I expect all of us to do the mahi and make the decisions we are each enabled to (and that authority is unfortunately sometimes in flux).

In return (its not an obligation though, its my pleasure), I provide unlimited access to myself and full transparency. Having an open door policy didn’t work so I literally tore down my office wall. I fight for what employees are worth and I am there as a mentor – if I can add any value but for some you were hired because…?. I fight to make peoples job easier through reevaluating processes and tools. Sure, I am often hampered because the planets of one, two and three described above never always align. But that’s just an easy excuse – my job is to alter gravity!

Yes, I am naturally seen as the backstop or wicketkeeper, but I’m not going to pad up if I think the person can handle or sort it themselves. I often quip something like ” If you cc me in this email, expect a response if I don’t agree with something, or can’t help myself to suggest a potential improvement, so best not to cc me and sort it yourself!”

And I don’t like to standout above anyone in the team. Yes I do a bit of grandstanding on LinkedIn but that’s not to steal team members thunder or take claim to the success enabled by others. That’s to fight for a cause, to proudly celebrate how the team have performed or to debate and learn more for an improved future (whether personal, our business or NZ Inc). Not really a sign of humbleness but I had a mental block around the word ‘Chief’ and its connotations of being the leader. A ‘leader’ (for as Bob Jones wrote, implies followers, and followers are not who I want to lead!). In a similar vein, for a long time I didn’t put CEO on my LinkedIn profile, my business card or my email signature. I didn’t refer to myself as the CEO – I would say “I work for Universal Homes”. Problem was, for practical purposes that doesn’t really work. It leads to confusion as to what you do in the company. Who the hell is the real CEO and in charge people would think. It wastes time, because the next question inevitably is ‘ What do you do there?’. Worse it looks like some sort of stupid humble brag. So CEO it is.

As someone conscious of leading an organisation ( lets face it, with a board, an exec and many managers all capable in their fields, at best I am only helping to lead) I aim to provide instant feedback. I dish it up when it’s warranted – positive or negative. Sometimes too instant and uncontrolled. Maybe a little blunt at times. Yes, we have a whole formal performance review process but look Kiwis don’t really take to those sorts of things that well. Especially when priorities and targets need to be moved around. So I just spit out exactly what I think at the time – straight up to all the management and exec (and for that matter the board). Maybe, occasionally, I exhibit a little self-control and EQ to those troops down the line.

Look I will never be able to navigate this human-led complexity with the grace of Nelson Mandela. I think I have come some way but I am still a work in progress!

Five. Health and safety is paramount and far reaching. Actually, it’s daunting. It should be, as running a construction company naturally involves physical risk. Property development is stressful and missing deadlines have big ramifications. There are so many aspects within the H&S banner, it’s massive and the requirements put on companies and Directors growing. I get great support from all levels in H&S. But man, it’s huge. That is why our H&S vision mantra plastered everywhere is simply “Health & Safety is the foundation of the way we work, everything, everyone, every time”

Six. The vision. The business books say, the CEO sets the vision for the company and puts in place the strategy to realise it. Then they must communicate that throughout the organisation to ensure maximum buy-in. Then with everyone on the same page you go deliver.

Easy.

So I did a big Vision presentation within the first three months to the entire team, based on what I had told the board when I was told I would be CEO about six months earlier. A Vision No1 2025 and a three-step strategy to get there. It went something like this:

Step One: Survive Covid and whatever Covid was throwing at us. In Nov 2020, it looked like we were out of it so a big tick – at the time.

Step Two: Recalibrate and Build 2020. At the time sales were going gangbusters and starts were still on time and inflation was not known, so a big tick there.

Step Three: Progress and Growth 2021 to 2022+ And I had all the corporate jargon to back up what I was promising, plus a five-year plan with plenty of revenue less-cost generating numbers. Our numbers are pretty easy, land acquisitions, house starts and house sales. 2021 sales and deliveries were on fire, albeit by the end of the year and the dreaded Auckland lockdown delays were building up with design review panels and consents, often via zoom. How 2022 is transpiring has definitely dampened what we will achieve. The strategic plan to hit that vision is wobbling.

That Vision No1 2025 is open to interpretation and it was fuzzy in my mind at the time.

I now have a much clearer personal Vision.

In today’s dollars: $1B revenue, $100m NPAT, 1,000 Home Settlements.

1/100/1000.

I don’t have a timeline on it. I’m not going to stick in PowerPoint. I haven’t really mentioned it anyone internally or externally except in passing. It’s magical to some, ridiculous to others but it’s achievable to me. It’s a stretch too far to plan unit by unit and make a corporate song and dance about until we get at least halfway there. But it’s in my head, I think about it every day to guide how my feelings around success and failure and what really matters in the big picture. And besides 1/100/1000 is kinda catchy.

Beneath, or should I say supporting, that Vision we have a five-year plan (which changes every month at the moment given market uncertainty). Currently it shows us getting just over halfway to the vision. That business plan is widely distributed throughout the company and management and board meets monthly to go over it. It is fixed in the first quarter of the year to solidify our KPI’s but then its a working tool to manage cashflow and market conditions. Those market conditions, the investment appetite of the board (which also changes, sometimes countercyclical), and especially our ability to generate house sales and buy developable land will determine how far we can go to achieve or exceed that five-year business plan.
Despite the business plan being a model for our cashflow requirements, it is a target to be beaten. And in development that might just mean a couple more big projects.

Seven. Stress. Pretty much you have to harden up and get over it. As CEO you get attention for your time from all directions. Now time is not the stress problem, I always feel like I personally have enough time to do everything.

I even internally chastise myself for not doing more: why haven’t I helped hunt out the next deal, why haven’t I improved this process yet, why haven’t I convinced this board member of this, what could I help this team with etc. Of course, I also don’t want to step on the very capable toes of those hired to do the work. And every time you try to write up a process, create a new procedure, or implement a fancy new initiative it takes time way from those employees just trying to do their job. Protecting their time is important – this is always a juggling act.

Time I have left in this world might be an issue, but no, day to day work time is not an issue that causes me stress. I am a bit of a geek, where I immediately deal with anything that is really business critical (and not just the sum of someone else’s lack of planning multiplied by some else’s ridiculous request). I keep a zero mail inbox. Everything gets filed. I look at emails no more than twice – one to determine when to deal with it, including right away, and another if required when I need to deal with it. I am reasonably organised in folders and where documents go, saving previous versions religiously (just like my subconsious forcing me to ctrl-Z every 18 seconds, the pain of losing past files permanently lingers in my memory).

So I feel like I have plenty of time (that might be a worry in itself, reread the part on internally chastising myself).

I also -at least consciously- don’t worry too much about what has happened in the past. If something has happened and it was my fault, or responsibility or I just happen to be the person that has to deal with it, then no point dwelling on it. Fess up straight away and clear the mental road to sorting it out. I have learned the hard way, that almost nothing in property development gets better if you simply leave it. I have now learned the same situation exists with people conflict and lack of business alignment.

[As an aside, I am firmly of the opinion Zoom time exasperated lack of business alignment. You should see some of my instant meetings when a meeting starts off with a few people and to solve an issue (typically a misunderstanding or incorrect assumption) I leave the room walking the office or calling and keep dragging people into the meeting until we a) have solved in and b) everyone who needs to understand now does).]

This doesn’t mean that I 100% ignore the past, or I don’t ever wish I did things different in the past. Of course I am conscious of what has happened before and sure, often there are learnings to be documented to prevent repeating. But primarily the task in hand needs to be dealt with in the present to sort out the future. Once I make a decision, I’m happy with it. No point dwelling on it. Harden up and deal with it.

I do always think about growth, simply how can we build more houses and grow the company (1/100/1000). This seems to be set at a plateau of stress that doesn’t cause too much pain, but like a mild twitch in the neck the stress of trying to achieve my internal ambition is always present. This is summed up by a recent quote I read ” I don’t fear failure. I fear being in the same place next year!” ‘Place’ in my mind being being our position of business growth.

Health and Safety, not so much a stress but a constant reminder to stay vigilant at all times. The stressful thing being, despite even if you have the best systems in the world, people on construction sites do have accidents.

What really causes me stress though is thinking about decisions. Not during the daytime when I am analysing what is best to do, or taking advice or formulating my battle strategy but at about 3.30am. I have never had a problem getting to sleep, but boy once I wake up and the mind is ticking, its very difficult to get back to sleep. And when that happens it might be 6am, good for another 30 minutes or so kip only!

Now my problem (yep another to add to the list) is my mind is not usually thinking about the big decisions, the life changing ones. You know the what do we do when the lights go off and the family has to Hazmat suit up for Covid and roam the waterless seabed armageddon type scenario. Nor finalising the seemingly impossible to agree road with Government that our billion-dollar development depends on. Nor stressing about what initially appear to be insurmountable obstacles creating delay and adding cost caused by design review panels, council and other entity consents. Or a lack of action in house. Or a disagreement in concluding a complicated deal. Nor do I stress about meeting KPI’s or annual numbers. I’m narcissistic enough to believe I am doing everything humanly possible in that regard already including learning to improve.

No, what happens to me is I wake up and cannot get back to sleep because all my mind can think about is the damn seating arrangement in the office! Or whether I have enough socks for the gym, or did I remember to send that pretty much irrelevant email to so and so. There must be a psychological diagnosis for this effect. Now I do realise it only happens when I have big day to day decisions that remain unresolved, but could my brain please at least help me out by processing those at 3.30 to 5am instead of worrying about where someone might sit in the office, or taking the rubbish out!

I can make decisions quickly or take time. It depends on the time and the implications. I am there to make the hard calls, once I have figured out the best call I have no stress enacting it.

BUT, I’m often not the last man standing on the decision front. There is this thing called governance and also for some decisions an internal consensus required. When I am waiting on the decisions of others, especially given time is not a developers friend, I get stressed. If I am delivered a constraint, which I have no control over, that directly conflicts the ability to make a decisions I get stressed. And the first thing to go when you get stressed is calmness. The pressure of the situation or the obstacle in front rarely causes me to even bit a nail, but me waiting for a decision from others, with my outwardly exhibited patience of a toddler often necessitates being straight jacked and muzzled. Calm under pressure yes. Calm whilst others unnecessarily increase pressure, not so much.

Though, as time goes on some decisions don’t actually need to be made. Alternatively, things that were once urgent are no longer treated that way. Issues that are critical, you learn you might take some stepping back and really thinking through before addressing. New situations that arise are a decision making quandary the first time, but from then on simply run of the mill. I have also seen that what is actually in your control increases, the more times you deal with a situation or succeed in a breakthrough. A lot of it comes down to the quantum and variability of decisions that make their way to my desk each day. Whenever I am not in control of something, I work to find a way to gain control. Mostly, nowadays, I admit it’s my fault if I can’t find a way to control any influence, or situation. I want to be able to blame nothing else other than myself.

Here is what used to stress me out, and over the last two years I have figured out to manage:

• Pretty much any request to write an urgent non planned ‘report’ from the board (which typically means I have to get input from others or get others to do the report) . Now for most non critical (i.e. people health and wellbeing) reports I simply say, hang on, what priorities would you like us to drop to enable this? Let us figure out how long this will take and what resources I will need to devote. Now sometimes above will circumvent me and put this stress onto someone in the team! That stresses me out. Culturally sometimes this sort of behavior is impossible to stamp out, but boy I let the offenders know. And I encourage all staff to simply say, “not sure let me check with the CEO”. And then I let the offenders know! If it is truly urgent, then I drop other stuff and either do it, or tell others to drop what they are doing (CEO reprioritisation) so they can blame me for the implications on their time) and they do it or we task it together.
• When people decide to move on. I used to take the brunt of it and a take a little bit to heart, regardless of who they reported to. Not that I was personally offended or anything, but that we have lost a good person who knows what they are doing. And I guess a bit of stress around, what are we going to do now? However, today its as simple as one second later and I think ‘good for them’, and then my mind goes straight to those who are still part of the team. Now do we have an opportunity for someone existing in the business or should we go recruit or should we reevaluate how we are doing this work? Is this an opportunity to improve ourselves as a team? We are great trainers in the industry so we lose some great people purely because their experience and success here sets them up for greater opportunities elsewhere, when we cannot provide a similar opportunity internally. Fine, I’m more than content with that. I must say though that my irremovable stress about growth does get a slight irritation when someone very productive, skilled, ambitious, no BS and nice does decide leave the barracks.
• A project failure. Look we are big and bad enough to have many projects. Let’s take the good with the bad, learn from the bad and do the next one better (until inevitably) that results in something outside our control which turns it bad again. Easy to take this approach if you have lots of projects and most of them are successful. Much more difficult to stay stress free when it appears everything is turning to custard. Experience has taught me though – monitor cashflow and do everything you can to stick it out. One of the biggest lessons working for some of the country’s preeminent private developers at the time, is their perseverance to stick it out, whatever it takes. Time heals in property, just got to make sure cashflow intake is greater than the bleeding. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. The title should be Cashflow Executive Officer.
• Getting told off. I’ll take the feedback, file it and keep doing this job to the best of my ability. What comes, comes.
• Getting fired. If actual performance doesn’t live up to projected performance, feel free to take my scalp. Whilst that is being decided I will keep doing this job to the best of my ability and try to improve myself and where I can motivate and influence my team as much as possible. What comes, comes. But I will not be playing any corporate political brown nosing games, or trying to protect my patch using negative or delay tactics or throwing anyone under the bus. And I will not let anything stand in the way of me telling it like it is. The good, bad and the ugly. And my resignation letter is on the server anytime you want to issue it. I’m on dry land now and have burnt the ships!

And here are some of my pet peeves – which maybe I have toned down my reaction to them (probably not)- that cause frustration. Dealing with frustration is a stress. Finding a way through alleviates the stress. These also represent a lesson to myself to try steer clear of creating these situations or naively falling into them from my own actions:

• Having a meeting, the team making decisions and then some of the attendees want to relitigate the decisions again outside of the meeting.
• Agreeing a deal with a handshake, in good faith, actioning accordingly and then the lawyered up detail seeks to do everything to destroy it by adding conditions that are more onerous than the deal points, or simply changing the goal posts.
• Being instructed to undertake a course of action and then resource is withdrawn from under you!
• Victim mentality.
• Being deliberately opaque. Or remaining opaque after someone has asked for more transparency in order to understand.
• Failing to communicate decisions downstream.
• Hiding or downplaying anything significantly negative.
• Companies taking on your work, then coming to you three months later and asking you, the client to prioritise what you want out of them because they overbooked themselves.
• Telling someone after the deadline, that the deadline is missed. How about some advance warning so something can be done about it!
• Conveniently hiding behind bureaucracy – it’s a war damn it, arm yourself with some options, jump in the solution tank and help me roll over the rules in our way!

Eight. Diversity, culture, values. The team I am currently part of now and in the recent past is a very diverse bunch. Ethnically, you can’t get much more diverse. I don’t plan to try and artificially manufacture the mix. Team culture is not something I have any intention of trying to control. We’ll do the odd social event, celebrate employee success, have an Xmas do (2021 first time ever couldn’t do it!), and put on lunch. There is a social club run by some of the team on their own accord with their own employee sponsored funding. I will facilitate whatever initiative the team wants in this inclusive space. But its a business first and foremost so let’s not PR spin it otherwise. I’m 100% open to anything with zero exclusions – isn’t that inclusivity? Values, well you should already be able to infer that from this memoir thus far.

Nine. Improvement. Everything can be improved. Focus on the incremental rather than looking for the silver bullet. Change management is difficult. And does something warrant a change? Nonetheless, when something requires change, that goes to the heart of a team members role, please understand, this will take some doing to get right. Often you will fail at implementing a change. All that means is you have to take another look at it and target the change in a different way. I earlier attempted to ban the words “But we have always done it this way”. However, quite often there is a perfectly good and still practically valid reason. You get that in a company 60 years old. In danger of aging like a dinosaur, you do need to critique your business practices. That starts not by dismissing the status quo out of hand but by first seeking out, why have we always done it this way.

Ten. What I love:

• When a team member succeeds, on their own – whether its negotiating a deal, achieving a project milestone, solving a difficult problem or just doing their own job one touch more productively.
• When people work together, regardless of the differences, and make it happen! You can beat it when your own plan comes together: that’s when the/a/your team make a plan, without you and it comes together!
• When an unsolicited proposal from within is put in front of me – that shows real initiative.
• When someone internal is promoted and they really take to their new position make it their own and demonstrate how they thoroughly deserved the opportunity.
• Working with others in the property industry to help improve it (or at least find a way to navigate the madness where legislation is involved). You don’t need to be a CEO to do that, but the three letters does open some doors to get involved at a decent representative level.
• Starts, Sales, Settlements (the more in number and profit the merrier) and the exciting promise of where new dirt we acquire can take this company and the great team of people behind it.

So, that’s a wrap. If you got this far I did warn you, now you know what sits deep in the recesses of this CEO’s mind.

New Tax Announcement

In March 2021 the New Zealand government introduced a new tax for Long Term Accommodation Service Providers (LTASP). LTASP commonly but technically incorrect are also known as Property Investors and often referred to, completely inaccurately, as Property Speculators.

I use this term LTASP based on the writings of Thomas Piketty, an expert in researching income and wealth inequality, who clearly states in his ground breaking book Capital that owning and providing a house for rent is a very productive service business. For me that puts that debate to bed (deathbed). Just as a supermarket as a business provides the human right of food, a LTASP as a business productively provides the human right of shelter – which enables it inhabitants to consume housing goods and grow their own productivity.

The tax is simple (although I suspect the final details at the end of the year will be very complicated): on existing housing you can no longer claim interest as a deductible expense. Your profit is now rental income, less expenses (excluding interest you must pay on the investment loan).

However, just to start to complicate things, this deductibility will still be allowed on new build property moving forward. How all the details of this working is anyone’s guess -given by definition a new property eventually becomes existing. Therefore, the first investor of a new build may get an advantage, but when they come to sell it the next investor won’t and will adjust their purchase price accordingly. That will have some impact on the new build investors willingness to pay a price in the first place, albeit the emotion of residential property and the thinking, that is 5 or 10 or 20 years off may not translate to any actual discount.

Hit a Nerve (in the butt, right below the back pocket)

That announcement sent me and at least 120,000 other people who are LTASP in New Zealand ballistic, not to mention economists and tax professionals who simplify could not understand the logic. A cashflow expense which you cannot deduct, now creating an accounting profit that the business owner must find additional cashflow funds to pay each year.

Put another way, anyone who runs a LTASP business (yep being a property investor in the simplified lexicon) that has debt on it will now have to front up with more cash. And that means to meet bank criteria for serviceability they will need to tap (or increase) more of their income to cover that new tax expense.

I may get into the dollars and cents of this financial perversity in a later post, as well as the implications and unintended consequences. There is plenty written about it, albeit not much without a doss of vested interest opinion or worst vitriol attached. Tony Alexander presents the best independent view here (in my view).

But, why do I care so much?

After a tirade of Linked Posts (on this vexing nuclear bomb of political ideology in action), by yours truly, people have been questioning – and I paraphrase with a degree of literary license:

“Why do you care so much about this new tax on interest deductibility?”

“You are in property development, your target market includes first home buyers, you produce new homes – they are all exempt? So why do you put yourself out there so much?”

“Why don’t you just focus on supply and promote what you have got – you could do so much better now- every investor in town will be hunting down your new properties and caps have increased?”

“You should be like other developers and congratulate all the new first home buyers that have been enabled and all the investors that may have previously only focused on existing prices?”

That’s because I am in the property development business, and on the face of it Universal Homes, and myself personally, stands to make more money if indeed this new tax increase sales activity in the new build space. The inference, is just shut and get on with it, your company could do much better than others out of all this.

However, I have my reasons.

A Table Full of Interest.

Everyone is biased and has vested interests, so let’s look at mine straight up.

My family runs a LTASP (remember I defined this earlier: Long Term Accommodation Service Provider) business. Yes we own some rental properties and my wife is CFO, COO, property manager and fund manager. I get to crawl under subfloors if a leak sprouts (only once so far) and send my income and net assets to the bank for assessing serviceability and security of the debt.

So quite obviously this new penalty tax costs me $ each year, that I will have to cashflow out of money that would have been used to reduce debt.

It also delays our ability to expand the business. Ironically, the next expansion intended to be a brand new universal home.

It also means -that since I am all-in, fully invested (not only in property, but mainly) with a buffer for the unexpected or presumably likely interest rate increases- that we will have to reduce spending (CFO has been advised) or cash out investments (last resort) or add debt (not happening) or find additional income….

The risk-reward retirement strategy might need a rethink as well, although I’m intending to see this out with the properties we have, as I am sure there are plenty of twists and turns yet over years to come and like any good LTASP we have a long term investment horizon. The only properties this business has sold were two owned for 11+ years, and that’s because the business partner wanted to cash out.

Regardless of what you think, LTASP is a legitimate business, and it has the added benefit giving people a roof over their heads. If you knock that business you better look under your own hood first. I am proud to own property that I market out to potential renting occupiers and sign tenancy agreements promising them my accommodation service for a weekly fee. This is a noble business.

And a Tax Beneficiary?

However, I also work in property development building hundreds of the houses that First Home Buyers (the ones that need a hand, not the ones you have come home with a wad of greenbacks or sterling, pretending to be in financial stress buying a house when they are flush all over the place) want and do purchase. We also develop Kiwibuild and Axis which are restricted to owner occupiers. Many of the houses we develop also suit investors, albeit, in total our investors last year ran at only 17% of total sales.

So, Universal Homes could be a big beneficiary of this tax. Because this new tax aggressively penalizes anyone buying existing (although most of that is now already encapsulated as a one off financial hit to existing owners) whilst almost forcing new investors to buy new. So more people buying new, more people buying Universal product!

Rosy but still coloured with red ink.

Its not all rosy for new build buyers though – if you buy your first home, now you do need to consider who you might be selling that to in the future to maintain value. Because then the house definition goes from new to existing and the value of the existing will depend if you are in a more home owner occupier desirable location/product type or a more tenant occupier location/product type. i.e. the predominantly likely buyer in 3, 5 or ten years time.

Sometimes the predominant buyer will be LTASP, other times owner-occupier and others even split – think working/middle class neighborhoods for houses and increasingly terraces and units and lower rise apartments. Other times is skewed one way heavily – LTASP primarily in some lower decile suburbs and inner city apartments or owner occupier primarily in expensive neighborhood standalone homes and townhouses. I may expand on this later if I can find some data to support my assertion and see if it is making a difference over the next few months. It might just all get loss in the noise.

So the fact that you might occupy a home you buy yourself or rent it out is largely immaterial to what the market value of that property will be at the time you sell it (or for valuations on the way through). The market will determine that value based on location relative to if it’s a home owner occupier area/product or a tenant occupier area/product. i.e. not all areas have the same home owner occupier versus tenantoccupier ratios.

With Universal product most of it is in that working/middle class demographic, that primarily suits owner occupiers selling to owner occupiers so Universal wins again. Although some suburbs over time do change, and a few out west that Universal built many years ago have more renters than owner occupiers compared to when they were first purchased.

All in all, the benefit I will get out of Universal benefiting from all this supposed extra demand is much more than the extra cashflow expense to the family LTASP business. So I should be a net winner, by a long way due to this tax – especially if I keep future purchases as new product and hold for a long time (which is always the goal of a prudent LTASP).

Passionately bemused

But, I still kick up a big fuss and are extremely angry. These are the reasons why I am bewildered with this new tax and think its simply a nightmare.

It’s illogical to me and almost every real financial and tax professional (not just layabouts with an opinion). An expense is an expense. This new penalty tax puts LTASP into a new paradigm that has no relationship to any other business. And if it was such a loophole, why retain the loop hole for a small proportion of new product and create a whole new two tiered system.

You (the NZ Govt) just punished 120,000 families trying to better themselves and their families under the legal rules of the day. In fact you drew on demonization in the media conveniently confusing investors with speculators to fuel the fury. You propaganded that investors were outbidding first home buyers causing home prices to rise. Well quite possibly, but no one really knows in an auction and it could have been other first home buyers outbidding each other. And what does that have to do with the other 119,500 investors who were no where near the auction room? And you did it with no warning, and you applied it to retrospective purchases and you said you were not going to raise taxes just six months ago prior to the general election.

Well someone needs to stand up for the middle class saving for their retirement, and their kids homes and keeping themselves out of state welfare. Many of these people are my friends, my staff, my associates. Some just purchased last year, spent money upgrading an old house so tenants could have a better environment and then get whacked with this burden.

The unintended consequences are loss of business confidence and faith, anxiety from all business and their employees on what is the next mess to be created in their industry, increasing costs and decreasing house supply and the actual effect on prices medium to long term. My hypothesis is any cost intervention hurts supply and will ultimately cause prices to rise.

To pay for the accounting profit, without additional revenue will mean cutting other expenses. This will hit retail and local tourism (as if either of them need that). Property managers will be made redundant and the owners will do that labour themselves. Worst will be all the financial and emotive stress – families will be ripped apart. Sure everyone should have a financial buffer for interest rate increases and the like, but quite simply this was unforeseen, beyond reasonable likelihood and stretches that buffer requirement to the next level. Maybe, just maybe there are few firesales…and that brings a lot of other issues in play.

Recent first home buyers should also be worried. Whilst in he long term I believe this will increase prices more than they need to, in the short term it could reduce house prices certainly in certain locations – especially regional New Zealand. Hey, but they are now existing owners so they don’t matter – do they?

I will be immersing myself into what happens from this point on – a little less passionately and more academically, perhaps.

The problem is supply. Not the 120,000 families who own property providing a service to occupying tenants. These LTASP have met the tenant demand where the government and developers still can’t.

And supplying is not getting easier. You can’t pick out a group and lambast them when constraints imposed on supply has nothing to do with them. Sure they might sell to a first home buyer, but then a tenant misses out. I can tell you now for every home buyer there are multiple tenants waiting in most locations. Why not focus on proactive positive supply measures.

At Universal we develop and it is just getting more and more difficult. We have been promised funding, (once with an accompanying press palaver on one of our site) only to have that withdrawn a year later when the press were not around. We submitted shovel ready projects to enable 1000 of ours and 13000 of others homes, but didn’t make the cut! Still a year on few shovel ready projects have seen a shovel! We were/are ready to go.

The problem is also forward demand. How much demand has been brought forward with people who had no where else to place money or decided no point doing anything but saving to buy a home due to Covid? A lot I reckon. Only time will tell, but without a substantial immigration surge post vaccine, this demand (for buying houses) could fall off fairly quickly, and prices will reach their natural cyclical peak, and either flatten or fall. In addition the Government are buying properties for state tenants out of the market, further restricting new and existing stock for first home buyers. That is ok, but let’s acknowledge that rather than fire all guns at the mom and dads (and men and women of whatever persuasion and family circumstance) LTASP business owners.

MOST IMPORTANTLY THOUGH

And this is why I am not going to now grease up the establishment and say this is a great tax for the interest of Universal homes to sell more homes or to promote ourselves as hand in hand with the government on this one. The fact is we don’t need to and we already have a great relationship with Kāinga Ora and build plenty of Axis and Kiwibuild homes. So we are already decent provider to first home buyers and – at least last week – can’t build fast enough to satisfy demand.

But MOST IMPORTANTLY it’s the disservice to Universal customers of the past that really irks me. 60 years of customers and now many have to go through this new penalty tax. They brought a home fair and square, some only a couple of years ago and now they are being asked to pony up cashflow on imaginary accounting profits. Or when they sell, they are at the disadvantage of selling an existing house -with different tax rules – now a newly created second class citizen to the next batch of new builds we deliver.

What’s to say our Universal new build customers of tomorrow, now at great advantage to Universal new build customers of just last year, won’t have a rule change also thrown in their face!

These are the customers, them and the 20,000 ones before, I and all the staff of Universal care about.

Just like Carolyn, from Long Bay, someone who cares about her children’s future and her financial security – an update I received just hours ago.

NZ Government (and all you keyboard warriors who wouldn’t know a doorknob from your own…) don’t dick them around please. Past or present. Sort out this tax in the detail, so it is at least not applied retrospectively.

Remember, there were supposedly no new taxes.

I have been doing some research into the crowdfunding of property developments lately. A recent LinkedIn post led me to a thread of propertytribes.com that rekindled my interest, now that some of the (dirty) water has flowed under the highly leveraged bridge. One highly PR focused developer, the poster child of the online development funding scene in 2016 and 2017, had some of their projects come a cropper and investors are nervously waiting for not a return ON capital, but a return OF capital. As I researched further I read story after story from crowdfunding investors many ignorant of the risk and few appeared to know the questions to ask to undertake proper due diligence on their crowdfunding investment.

The last time I wrote on the subject (here) was in 2014 – boy time goes quick. Some of those links no longer exist. Because the virtual space changes so quickly I am not going to provide links, just google for crowdfunding property/real estate developments.

The first thing is there is a difference between investment-based crowdfunding and loan-based crowdfunding.

The latter should be at least, be a loan with a preferred return that is secured by the hard asset that you are loaning on – the land and construction on top. That will always sit in priority behind a development loan from a main lender- if one exists- but should be in front of any equity investors.

The former, an investment based crowdfunding opportunity, is really a plea for hard cash, equity, secured by nothing more than a promise to make a profitable property development and have enough profit left to give you more than you put up.

Whichever one, you should understand property development is highly risky and do your homework. If you have never been involved in a property development, then I just don’t think you can comprehend the risk.

Now some of you out there might like a bit of a flutter. Roulette and racehorses, poker or penny stocks. You could even be one whose risk disposition enjoys getting in early on a pyramid-scheme, being of the mind you will get out with enough cash to purchase a chateau in the Pyrenees before the base inevitably collapses. So for a measly 5k, 10k or even 500k be my speculating guest and play the numbers without doing too much investment analysis – invest widely and shallow or just do it: put everything on green.

But for those of you who like to research where you are putting your hard earned savings and don’t know the developer apart from a slick online presence, here we go.

The questions to ask of the project and the developers behind it when conducting due-diligence on investing in a crowdfunded property development.

1. Why are they crowdfunding the project? Yes I know it’s obvious they want to raise money, but why can’t they raise money via lenders or other investors or use their own money? The answer could be purely financial – the developer can raise money cheaper via the crowdfunding platform – i.e. put another way you are receiving a return less than more sophisticated investors would require to invest. For example, even if you are getting a fair and proportional share of the profit, other sophisticated equity investors might also require a preferred payment, like 5% per annum, that is paid as a project expense before the profit is divided up. It might be the hassle factor – it’s simply easier and quicker to obtain financing from a crowdfunding platform than by going through the rigorous due-diligence demands from professional equity investors. The answer could be more worrisome – they have tried the other funding avenues and no one will lend them and/or this project the money! Or worse its their first project and they have no idea where to get funding from!
2. Have they any of their own equity in the project? Can they prove it or are they using the crowdfunding to buy them out, before they have even started? Now, skin in the game is often a prerequisite for any venture capitalist – and that’s essentially what you are since every development project, by definition is a new venture (as opposed to say investing in typically the much less risky commercial office building with existing tenants). You want to find out if they have hard cash in this specific project, it’s just one more incentive for them to perform when the going gets really tough. A key point here is ‘specific project’. If you are investing in a commingled fund (multiple projects), in which the developer does have cash, it is much more difficult to see which projects have more of the developer’s self-interest at heart.
3. Is the developer experienced? If yes, then that is a positive. Dig deeper. Are they experienced in exactly the type of project they are promoting for funding? Experience developing two lot subdivisions has next to no relevance to developing ten attached terrace homes let alone a thirty unit apartment project. The risk profile and operational nous required is magnified substantially. Converting a large warehouse to smaller tenancies is not the same as building a brand new office development. You don’t really want to be funding a developer who knows not a lot more than yourself.
4. But do you trust them? Do enough research so you don’t have even think about that. Trust me, trust is not enough. When the crowdfunding platform provider says they have professionally vetted every deal, then since it is so bulletproof, are they also going to guarantee the return? No of course not.
5. Has the developer had any hard knocks? Those who haven’t can often develop an ego and get tunnel vision letting their optimism blind them to the realities of development risk. They think they can control all the risk and are the master of their own destiny. Few can forever. A developer who has been beaten up a few times, and through a recession or two, comprehends risk and reward much better. No developer of any longevity has always only ever had successful projects [feel free to correct me if I wrong if you are the exception!].
6. How much does the crowdsourcing platform charge the developer? With technology, you would think it isn’t too much, and they are actually enabling cheaper development finance without changing the risk-return profile. But if it is substantial ask why.
7. Is the crowdsourcing platform provider also or has been a traditional property development lender? i.e. have they been doing property development lending for a long time and they have essentially just tech’ed up. If so, that’s a big positive, because they will (should) better appreciate the risk and only take on better projects.
8. Is this crowdsourcing platform successful? I mean regardless of project risk, what is the risk to your money if the platform goes bankrupt? There should be nothing, bar a small interruption to project communications. And if the platform owners and the developer are one and the same, is this clearly disclosed? If there are only one developer’s projects advertised on the platform, then they might as well be one and the same. Or is the developer using the pretense of a third party or respectable intermediary to entice you to part with your money?
9. Many sites show the investment success of past projects online, all those pretty pictures makes a great testimonial to encourage you to dip into your pocket. But there are a few things to consider. One, just because lots of projects are fully subscribed, doesnt mean the project will be a success. They are there intending to convince you to join the herd: lots of people have invested and so should you. Ignore those, they don’t tell you anything about project success or if the return on your investment is appropriate for the risk of the project. Two, for the projects that have closed – and investors have been paid out – identify the ones that are actually property developments (as opposed to existing assets) and had terms similar to the project you are thinking about participating in. A project wanting finance before consents have been issued is riskier than one where a consent has already been issued. A conversion of a heritage building has a different risk profile to a ground-up development. A commercial building with a tenant signed up is less risky than one where the developer has yet to locate tenants. Three, ask the provider to tell you about any projects that were not successful – good luck at getting that info though from an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot!
10. Talking about talking, does the investment specify regular communication reports, so you can see project progress? They should, and the report should tell the whole story. I would expect to know how my investment is performing along the way. For main banks lending on construction it is called a monthly drawdown report, timed not-surprisingly before the bank will release funds to pay the big bills like construction in progress. Or put another way it’s like half-yearly report season in the stock market. Unfortunately, you might not have any secondary market to sell your shares if things are going poorly, but at least you can psychologically and financially prepare for a loss, or attempt to make some noise to rectify the situation.
11. Where do development management fees sit? Yes, the developer makes their money based on the profit of the project, but typically they will also want a preferred expense to pay them for managing the project. It could be called project management, project administration or a development fee. And if it’s in the expenses it gets paid out, before the profit is split. So after the final wash-up, even if the project makes you the investor no money, the developer may have had a decent feed along the way. Whilst it would be good that the developer only gets paid out of profit, it is a legitimate expense and should be shown. Just make sure it’s not an exorbitant cost for this type of project and reflects the actual cost of people’s time doing the work, and not another profit center that effectively dilutes your potential return.
12. What other related party costs? This is where sophisticated lenders take a very hard look at a developer’s financial feasibility. And so should you. You want to know exactly how many fingers the developer has in the development expense pie. Every additional profit center could dilute your project profit especially if costs ‘escalate’ during the project. For example, is the land being provided at cost, or is it based on a higher (or even pumped up) valuation? The developer might be making all their money on this one element alone, and who cares what the final project profit is. Fair enough if longer than a year has passed between buying the land and putting it into this crowdfunding investment. But just be aware. A huge jump in land valuation, in a short period of time, without any added value being applied to the site (like consents) should be challenged. Even with consents, make sure the land is worth the higher amount – ask for and read a professional valuation/appraisal. Other examples to watch out for: is the developer also the builder, and taking profit there? What about the sales agent, does this developer sell inhouse? Or a key supplier to the construction? Developer’s partner the ‘interior designer’? Brother, the engineer? Or is there a ‘finance arrangement fee’, paid to none other than the developer? There are plenty of places to hide developer profit centers. If everything is disclosed and you accept they are a fair rate, then fine.
13. Fixed contracts. Following on from the point above, even if they are a fair rate, and you are happy with the developer clipping the ticket in multiple line items are the costs capped? Fixed fee agreements and contracts as much as possible are a must. But in the construction of private development projects, I hasten to say there is really no such thing as a fixed price. And if the developer IS the builder, then they are probably quite amicable to construction variations! (If you don’t know what a variation – or change order – is, then please reconsider investing anything into a property development!).
14. Is there a bank loan for construction/total development costs on the project? If so what are all the terms and conditions? Specifically, when does the loan have to be paid back? What is the Loan to Value ratio? And who is the lender, what is their track record in property developments? Are they are related party to the developer? Do they get a cut of the profits? And is there a second lender on the project, perhaps a layer of crowdfunded debt? Or high-interest mezzanine funding – which itself adds further risk. And make sure you know if profit will be shared with lenders before you get your cut.
15. What security do you have (and this varies by country, learn more here)? Is your investment secured by mortgage a registered charge, a pledge or a lien. What about quasi-security like bonds and personal guarantees? Has or will the contractor put up a cash bond – they can become life savers if the contractor goes bust (doesn’t happen you say!).
16. Can you see the detailed feasibility? And I mean detailed. Now if you haven’t been involved in property development it might not make much sense. Sure if may show a glowingly high 30% Return on Cost at the bottom, which translates to a whopping big return on equity, if there is debt leverage in play. But you won’t know what is missing or even what is realistic. Is there a line item for contingency? Do the professional fees equate to a percentage of construction costs commensurate with this type of project? To understand you really need someone who has been there before to look over it. Believe me that’s what the main bank lender will be doing. You could take the approach that if the lender has ok’ed the development then it will be fine. And there is some truth to that. But if the lender is only lending a low Loan-To-Value ration, say 40 or 50% of the total cost with full security and a personal guarantee that has some teeth to it (i.e. there are personal assets to go after, that aren’t also within a personal guarantee for another loan) then they may not have done a lot of due diligence. At that low rate of leverage, barring a global financial pandemic, they will almost always get out fine as they are first in line to be paid back.
17. On the feasibility. If you only manage to look at two items, let it be these. Sale price and construction costs. The former is quite easy to analyze even for a layperson. Are the sales prices realistic in today’s market? Look at your local online listing engine, compare this project to the competition – adjust for size and location and see if it stacks up. Better, ask for the professional valuation or appraisal for the project. And if there is none, that’s a red flag on its own. If there is, then don’t rely on just the summary. Look inside at the valuer’s assessment of the competition in the body of the report. I will let you know a little tip for free (yes another one!), most developments only ever get out of the ground, because the developer is setting the market. That is their prices will be ahead of where the market currently is. The developer is hoping their project will attract the market setting price! I am OK with that, as long as it is not an outrageous escalation.
18. And construction costs. Unless you are a quantity surveyor or professional cost estimator you are not going to know if the costs are reasonable. But that’s when you would expect to see a report from a professional quantity surveyor or cost estimator included in your crowdfunding investment due-diligence pack. Not there – hmmmm. Don’t rely on a builders price on its own without a professional signing off that the cost looks right. But at least it’s better than a developers estimate.
19. Pre-sales, does the project already have pre-sales? – that is sales or pre-leasing commitment before you have handed over your investment. That de-risks the revenue side of the equation, somewhat. It can backfire though because then you have a capped revenue, that can’t rise with the market and if construction costs rise. This is a common situation with property developments that contribute to their downfall. I could go on, but no need, here is something I wrote earlier on the pre-sale dilemma. Although, make sure any pre-sales are legit – look at the sale contracts and discount any that are with related parties – like family, pets, or deceased relatives!
20. Schedule? Only a professional expert can tell, but is there sufficient float to allow for realistic timelines? Delays cost money, especially if there is debt leveraged against the development. And delays happen all the time. But the best know how to set expectations and depressurize the development by setting a realistic schedule, that allows for some of the unknowns. Of course this always eats into the return, hence why so many schedules are so ridiculously tight. Remember, you are most concerned with the return you receive at the end of the project. What is said at the beginning is always only a guideline (and expect it to be optimistic).

Now about 17 points ago you may have said to yourself, is this degree of investigation worth your time? Only you can answer that, and it ties directly into your risk appetite and the sum you intend to invest. Look if its 5k or 10k maybe you can gloss of most of it and focus on the developer’s success record and whether you buy into everything they promote to you online. Certainly, developers want to provide as little information as possible, and presumably, crowdfunding platforms want to interact with investors as little as possible – to keep their human costs down. But if you are ready to part with a sum that you can’t afford to lose, then understand this: it is a risky business and you are supplying venture capital to a speculative activity. Property development is not the same as property investment. Not only might you not receive a return as great as you think but it is also very easy to have all your contribution wiped out. And unlike the share market, you cannot exit until 100% of the dust has settled. From what I have read, many crowdfunding investors don’t really differentiate development projects from an already income-producing investment (an office building for example). But development is much riskier and regardless of disclaimers on the crowdfunding website and some flash videos with people driving flasher cars, unless you have been in the business, you simply can’t comprehend the risk your cash is about to endure.

However, let’s say you manage to get ticks on everything above. Even after all of that, property development is still behest to the mighty market. Flat or falling sale prices combined with rising construction costs, planning ‘delays’ and optimism bias are part and parcel of the development game. Margins can be wiped out in no time. Although also understand (otherwise, no one would get involved in the development business), in an escalating real estate market margins can be amplified – can your equity investment take advantage of that or has a cap been placed on your return?

So ask yourself this, does your pending online investment still sound fun? Is it still worth you following the crowd? If so, I hope you get the return promised, but please do not moan if it goes pear-shaped. You have been well and truly warned.

Andrew Crosby

www.developmentrisk.com

P.S.

Now in this blurred world of social media versus professional media, my opinion versus my employer(s), salary versus side-hustle, middle of the business day versus 11pm on a Sunday evening, it can all get a bit confusing. So, here is my value proposition, and both complement and benefit each other.

• If you have a development site that you would like to sell some or all of, to develop yourselves, or to build houses then Universal Homes www.universal.co.nz might be able to help. We focus on delivering value-for-money homes in the ‘relatively affordable’ range, like the 1300 home westhills.co.nz or the 600 plus homes we have built at Hobsonville Point, or the thousands of others around Auckland over the last 60 years.
• If you want to learn more about real estate / property development and a continuous improvement approach, with books and courses in development management to maximize profit and decrease risk then visit www.developmentprofit.com
• Message me on LinkedIn at any time linkedin.com/in/ajcrosby. Gee I will even help you analyze your next project if you like.

4:10am Beep, Beep, Beep. Like a hungover Ninga I rolled out of my future wife’s bed in a small flat in Sandringham. Stumbling down the stairs my eyes found their focus on a flashing luminescent green screen of a Nokia 3210 cellphone. The stop loss trigger had activated on Nasdaq listed CMGI. My shares had been automatically sold, but not before taking a horrifying fall. I had purchased it at just over $150, and now it was less than $50. I was wide awake now.

‘What did this mean?’ I pondered as I downed my breakfast ritual of 2 Diet Cokes, albeit a little earlier than most days. CMGI had been the best performing stock in America. They had the perfect business model – they invested in Dot Com companies.

‘Oh well, this sure bet tech thing is looking a little like how some property developments end up. Burned.’

‘CollaborIT is different though,’ I thought. ‘Our customer base is growing and it is gong to be amazing once we launch in Chicago.’

…

Less than a year earlier I had confronted my boss, Tony at Verve Cafe in Parnell over breakfast.

“Look, all my mates are going to London to work in finance and tech. They are earning huge amounts of money. And to be honest I am a little bored and frustrated trying to coordinate contractors and consultants on our projects. I want to go to the UK.”

I had only been working in property development for a couple of years, but had become more interested in technology. At night I self taught HTML and Cold Fusion coding. I built a website for Eden – in 1998, as far as I could tell, it was the second property development in New Zealand to have its dedicated own marketing website. I started a business with my flatmate and we started building websites. Our lawyer was one of the first to buy. I was the property development manager slash website guy.

But by this eggs benedict breakfast in the Spring of 1999, I wanted more. I truly was frustrated with the inefficiencies of property development.

‘Why couldn’t architects figure stuff out with the engineers without calling me?’

‘What do you mean you don’t have that version of the drawing?’

‘I gave you that variation request last week, where is the answer?’

All too common words in the property developers vernacular.

Tony sat there, expressionless, I imagine expecting a Dear John resignation.

“But,” I started to continue.

“But?” Tony replied. I am pretty sure he was thinking I was about to ask for a raise, using the going to London thing as some sort of juvenile employee leverage.

However, I was serious and finally brave enough to broach the question. “Tony, what if we – you and me – do our own Internet thing. That keeps me here and who knows what we can do?”

And like a true bona fide entrepreneur, one who I am eternally grateful to for that opportunity, without a second of thought he replied, “Sure, 50/50 You can wind down everything else you are doing and come back to me with a proposal. What are your thinking?”

“I have no idea, but what if I come back to you with a proposal say a couple of months after Christmas?” I said.

“Sure.”

And CollaborIT.com was born. [Note: The url CollaborIT.com has since been acquired and in use by a company not related, in any way, to the business I started as we discuss in this article.]

Well that name came many months later.

I truly had absolutely no idea what sort of Internet thing to do. A few weeks later, I was on a plane home from the gold coast after celebrating New Years eve on the dawn of the 2nd millennium. Actually I recall we spent midnight in McDonalds in Coolangatta, because you could experience the countdown in NSW and walk out the back door, wait an hour and do it all over again in Queensland. Anyway, the inflight magazine had an article about an Interent service called Buzzsaw that had just launched in the States.

And CollaborIT had found its mission.

“Buzzsaw is one of a few new applications that is using the internet to facilitate collaboration and document sharing in construction projects,” I said addressing the three others in the dark boardroom at the top of one of those towers along Symonds Street (New Zealand’s silicon valley of the day) one autumn evening.

“There are a few others also starting, including some guys in Melbourne with Aconex but they are focused on procurement as well and targeting contractors. We can do our own one and I believe the key to project collaboration, to make it successful is to get clients on board, the developers and the owners. Then, once they are sold on the concept they will ‘force’ everyone on their projects to use it.”

“Ok, we are in then. A Redwood and Greenwood Technology joint venture. We will build the software and sort out the administration and seek out further venture capital with our recently made American friends when we need it and you run it Crosby. Craig will help with business development once you have a product to launch,” Simon the CEO said. [Of course I am using some literal licence here, as the details of how and what we would do took months to figure through].

CollaborIT.com had a board, funding, a technology delivery partner and was in business.

Now the American friend, was the technology founder turned venture capitalist Chris Coffin who came to New Zealand with a view to take the America’s cup back to San Francisco. His money was made, if I can recall the story correctly, by developing email and modem software many years earlier that allowed bands on tour to get paid quicker, essentially on the night of their gig. Before his technology, it could take weeks for bands to collect their payment. He also was partly responsible for scaling the Palm Pilot when he worked at US Robotics in the 90’s.

With a substantial war chest in the hundreds of millions he funded the America True campaign, and whist in New Zealand planted seed capital in a handful of tech start-ups through his investment vehicle Vision Ventures. Eventually, Chris settled on one company that was pioneering SaS using a Citrix systems platform as well as building leading edge applications. Greenwood was providing Software as a Service, a dumb terminal linked to a central server technology – where you subscribed for applications and all your centralised IT support on a monthy basis. Yes even back in 2000 you could access all your applications via a cloud from anywhere there was an internet connection.

One reason for his angel investments in New Zealand, was that it was cheaper to produce software in New Zealand than in the United States, especially given the exchange rate at the time. Chris’s view was, build and test software in New Zealand, where it was cheap and the isolate market represented a low reputation risk to trial new ideas. And then if an application showed promise, he would take it to the American and essentially the world via his headquarters in Lake Forest, Chicago.

CollaborIT had angel eyes looking down from a very high place.

So we built it.

The best way of describing CollaborIT is it was like a glorified online drop box for property development projects, with a twist. Not only could you access documents but you could also access software applications, using nothing more than a dial-up (remember those days?) internet connection and a basic computer.

That mean’t not only could the architect upload the latest plans, which would automatically notify the project team via an email, text of fax* but the developer could then mark them up (red line) online to discuss with the project team in real-time. And every version was kept, and an audit trail recorded who did what and when. That way, there was no more ‘Have you received the latest detail from the architect Mr Engineer?’ because with two or three clicks you could check yourself. With some automated workflow integrated into the software, variation management, a big bug bear of mine as a young development manager, was enabled.

[* Yes CollaborIT was fax friendly. In 2000, in the real estate and construction game we worked in an interesting technology transition phase where I would print out emails to fax to people!]

Not only that, but with deals struck with Microsoft and other application providers, we could provide real-time access to applications without having the user pay for the entire software. Think of opening a Project schedule file or running CAD mark-up software without ever trying to install it on your computer.

The user interface was made as intuitive as possible. It looked like a folder tree on the left and files opened in a window on the right. And because essentially you were running software that normally ran on a desktop, you could drag and drop, create folders and do everything else in document management that was not so intuitive with a standard web based interface in those days.

One of my big learnings in software development, is you have to make it as easy as possible for users. Otherwise they simply won’t use it. Another learning is that every feature you add needs to be carefully considered. Once they get used to it, every user becomes an internet mogul with a wish list of features. However, every feature added creates complexity for new users, and often puts them off. So we released new features very judiciously. In the end, we made the features you had access to linked to your login, so advanced users might have the whole suite, and beginners, just the necessary functions.

Of course, and a unique selling proposition at the time, was if a user or a project had specialist software, we could make that accessible to all users. So CollaborIT had software within the software.

The business model was simple.

Primary revenue was generated from users who paid a monthly per user per project fee to access CollaborIT and a monthly per MB fee to pay for storage and bandwidth. The more projects and users the more revenue.

Secondary revenue was based on customization. As the number of projects grew, a third revenue source became apparent- consulting services to implement the system within projects and project teams. However, first we had to get a critical mass of projects online, and enough users familiar with the system before we could think about charging them a consulting fee.

The cost structure was also simple, CollaborIT was charged a per average user at anyone time fee and a per MB data storage fee. And there were all the normal expenses of administration and marketing and of course the capitalized cost of building the software in the first place, ongoing feature development and maintenance.

With enough projects fixed costs would be covered, and the fees were set to make a margin on each new user/MB and project.

Because I was an ex development manager, I and a few staff did all the user testing on pretend projects, pretending to be a developer, contractor or consultant on different computers in different places. Our first clients would facilitate the real user testing. And that worked out without many issues.

About a year after that boardroom presentation version 1.0 was built. Simon came up with the name ‘CollaborIT’ and we went to market.

I had to buy a suit. And a tie. I was transitioning from software development director to salesman.

We thought we started with a bang. Our very first meeting to demonstrate CollaborIT was with none other than Lendlease in Sydney. We finished putting together our sales presentation in the Symonds Street boardroom at about 2am, I went home for a few hours sleep and Craig picked me up to go to the airport at 6am.

Internet connections were not what they are like today. We had planned to test a few things in an Internet Cafe before the meeting, but we couldn’t connect. We didn’t know if it was an Internet connection issue or the software was down. Then came the meeting.

I can’t recall who we met, but he was high up in the organisation and in charge of rolling out the very concept of CollaborIT, online project collaboration, on their worldwide projects. What a whale of a client, if we could land them. And, the software worked well enough for us to bluster through a presentation that made it look like CollaborIT was 100% perfect.

That was the last we heard from Lendlease. But it gave us some experience and it gave us some confidence there was a real market out there for this type of product.

The next year, all of 2001 I was in sales mode. Phone calls, emails, meetings, presentations. All throughout New Zealand and in Sydney and Melbourne. In between scheduled meetings, I would don the suit and simply walk the CBD’s methodically going to every property development company’s office to try and make a contact, or if I was lucky to give a presentation on the spot. No LinkedIn back then.

My initial marketing strategy was:

1. Get the private property developers interested and sold on the concept. The benefits being saving time and money on collaboration, having an audit trail to track project and consultant/contractor performance, less printing as documents could be formally issued via CollaborIT and overall improved project efficiency.
2. Find a champion within their company who had enough power to influence/force others to use the system, as well as process and IT nous to ‘control’ CollaborIT – that’s called a super user today.
3. I help the champion set up the project structure on the software and how they were going to use it and then they would role out CollaborIT on a test project or two.
4. I would ensure the key users (architects, project managers, development managers, engineers, main contractor) were well trained. Live trained, because every new user became a sales target. Most were doing multiple projects or had other clients with projects.
5. Momentum would build. We would use testimonials and champion CollaborIT advocates to convert prospects to users, and wala every private developer would be using CollaborIT on all their projects.
6. With a few projects onboard we would hit Australia hard – they had the customer base market size we needed. Surely we would convert them as easily as Kiwis.

It soon became apparent we didn’t have enough resource to live train everyone and be able to rapidly scale the number of users. It took a long time to set the project up on CollaborIT. Not because of the software – that was super easy. But because when a project was set-up you had to think exactly how you would use it on a particular project and ensure that all who used knew their responsibilities. Otherwise it would just end up like a communal dropbox. People used it in different ways. Some simply used it for the online plan markup function. Others as a pure ‘cloud based’ document management system. My bluechips used it as a full integrated project management and collaboration tool.

Private developers loved the concept. Many were happy to get it going on their projects. The cost to value benefits were just so good, for any development manager who experienced on a day to day basis, like I had for two short years, the frustration of coordinating everyone and document on a project. But there were few champions within private developers actually willing to really enforce its use on their projects. And when a consultant or contractor moaned because they didn’t want to use a new system, or because they had their own system, or blame internet connection speeds (horribly slow at the time) most would relent. So CollaborIT, as easy as we made it, was just a bit too hard for them.

But there was substantial success with government projects. There, the project director in charge, often had the power to make sure everyone did use the system. Some actually wrote CollaborIT’s use into contracts and fee agreements.

With Super Power Champion Users like Shane on the Southland District Hospital Project, Derrick on Tauranga Hospital and Dunedin Airport, and others on 4 large Prison projects, the Northern Busway and wastewater upgrades we got traction. Plus these projects typically had the budget to justify CollaborIT to their boards and CEO’s.

Other uses came out of left field. One law firm used CollaborIT to manage retirement village contracts. An investment bank used it in the due-diligence for a large global M&A deal.

It wasn’t happening overnight but revenues were slowly increasing.

Then Chris made an offer. He would invest a substantial amount into CollaborIT for a substantial equity share. And we would take it to Chicago and market to America.

We mucked around a bit and turned down the initial offer, thinking it was better to build our user base up in Australasia first, so CollaborIT would become more valuable and we could demand a higher slice of the action. So we stalled.

However, even if we had taken it up it may have not come to fruition as by this time, the dot com bust was well under way. Chris would have been losing large back in the States and then later on, pretty suddenly he quit his investment in NZ. The relative exchange rate simply made no sense to continue developing software in New Zealand.

But I continued with CollaborIT. The software was a success on most accounts. Connection speeds still frustrated many – a problem with the Internet at the time moreso than our platform – but it worked really well. It helped development projects save money.

Two problems mean’t CollaborIT never made it to a listing on the New York stock exchange and why I don’t yet live in a modernist class box perched on a cliff facing San Francisco Bay.

ONE. I didn’t make enough sales. Simple. My responsibility and I failed. In my defense were a few mitigating circumstances that we hadn’t appreciated before we started.

New Zealand is a small market, and there simply were not enough big projects around. Private developers did not stick to it as I initially expected. Yes they could all see the benefits, but any hassle (and change means hassle for many) meant few would persist to enforce CollaborIT’s use.

Each project sale took a huge amount of effort. It wasn’t showing people how to use the software – that was relatively basic. It was setting up the offline process/rules in which they would use the software. Some architects would issue documents via CollaborIT and still send a printed set around – until this was explicitly listed in their fee agreement.

Some had their own internal software that meant they felt they had a double up of internal process to comply with. Others simply didn’t want to adjust their firewall.

Some contractors simply didn’t like it because it exposed their own contractual management misgivings. And they like the fact the variation process was a mess, it made their ability to make claims easier. I will always remember one principal client on a massive billion dollar project telling me the contractor had spent weeks putting together a multi million dollar dispute claim blaming lack of principle responses to variation change requests as a reason for cost overruns. But for him, he simply printed out the CollaborIT audit trail and took that to court. And won.

Superusers, the disciplined ones that utilized CollaborIT to its full potential were few and far between. Probably like great project directors are often few and far between.

I couldn’t convert Australians. Aconex, albeit targeting contractors moreso than developers, was making reasonable progress so there was some sort of competition. But they would of been facing the same issues above that I was. They managed to invest themselves through this and come out the other side a billion dollar company 15 years later. Face to face contact was necessary in those early days, and we needed fulltime staff on the ground to give it a good push – not just a fly-in and out guy. Still a few, mainly architects on international projects, like the World in Dubai became dedicated users. More would have come if I could have sorted the second issue out.

AND TWO. Our back-end technology was not scale-able. Now I didn’t now this at the time and until very late in the piece but going with Citrix was a mistake. And so did the backend server costs. It cost us an ongoing fortune, so the incremental margin per additional user was not that much. In retrospect we should have done a pure website based application, and offered SaS applications a side product. But because how CollaborIT was built, we had to run it through Citrix and on expensive equipment in the cloud. Nothing technically wrong with Citrix, just at the time not cost effective to run to hundreds or thousands of part-time users on a development project. The backend server and date charges, well let’s just say you could do it for one tenth of the cost today.

That extra cost meant we did not have sufficient money for more marketing, or full time staff to get Australia humming. Or to get the original investors fed. That’s what we needed to do to increase the value so we could keep a decent equity stake before taking it to America.

In New Zealand, I don’t believe spending extra on marketing or staff was an issue as I pretty much talked to every single developer, government entity and consultant out there, and simply made myself available without additional cost to anyone in New Zealand at anytime, in person. There were just not enough takers. Our conversion rate was too low. And our price structure meant it would never be a mass market product.

With enough users we would have changed the back end technology, unfortunately no one had the will or funds to redo it. Chris was gone. The technology boom had collapsed. Softbank didn’t exist to throw squillions at it. By 2003 me and Tony decided that was enough, we had given it a shot, the concept worked ok, but CollaborIT did not make enough money. The business model and our execution was flawed. There was no appetite to continue. So let’s move onto something new.

CollaborIT was transferred to its original namer. I went back to property development 101. And until this article I never really gave it that much thought or had much desire to do another dotcom.

That’s why when I read articles and success stories from those who are making it in PropTech, like these fellas, emerging from the New Zealand market and going international I know how hard it is, and how amazing they must be. A decade ago I would have been jealous. Now I am just in admiration.

Here are the only two articles I can find about CollaborIT from almost 20 years ago. About the only thing else I can find from those days is a letter from Donald Trump, whom I interviewed for CollaborIT’s blog at the time.

NZ Herald 2002

Bob Dey Report 2002

P.S.

Of course, Dotcom has turned into a proliferation of PropTech in recent years, so my interest has piqued and I have done extensive research into the ‘next big thing’. That’s how the book Destiny came about. Everything about PropTech (from the history of technology, to where it could go in the future) – related to real estate development and construction, wrapped up in a story about a developer from Chicago… If that sounds like a good read you can get a copy and take a free look at the first chapter or so here from Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Future-Real-Estate-Development/dp/1095425676/

Cheers

Andrew Crosby

www.developmentprofit.com

The Developer Chronicles: Master-planned Projects

In this series, I describe master-planned projects. The discussion focuses on the difference between a one-off project and a multi-stage, multi-year planned development. I explore the factors that great development teams grapple with every day. I hope you find it of value.

AND you can also contribute to this opensource education by commenting with your own experiences, strategies, tactics and ideas here on LinkedIn. That’s where we can really embrace group network effects for continuous improvement in development management.

The DC: Master-planned Projects #8 Selling the Dream Location

There is only one word that a master-planned developer likes better than “Sold”. And that’s the three letters that one day eventuates after it:”Out”. Selling Out, with a sizable profit* of course, is the ultimate goal for any development. In a master-planned project that can be a long long time away. And there are many other differences between selling a master-planned and a one-off development.

[ *Yes you can measure your profit in social good if you are in the not-for-profit or government housing sector.]

A Different Kind of Selling

In this book I describe four levels of real estate development branding: company branding, master project/estate branding, project building/use branding and location branding. For a one-off project, with a single-use (like office premises) you may not even need to mention your company, pay lip service to the location and focus solely on the product in question. But in a master-planned project, you are likely going to have to grasp different ways of selling at all four levels.

This edition will focus on location branding.

When beginning to sell a master-planned development you might not have a lot of material to start with. Selling a location that no one can yet see takes a vision. A vision to implant your dream, of the desirability of the development you are creating, into the minds of potential buyers. The further your project lies from existing infrastructure – that is the schools, shops, parks, places of work and play, motorway exits, ferry ports, train station and everything else that makes up a neighborhood – the more expansive the vision you must present to potential buyers. If you intend to develop all that as part of your project (aka your master-planned project is essentially a new suburb) then at least you have control of delivering this vision. But if your master-planned project is merely within a new or growing suburb then the vision you present has to line up with the reality of the social and physical infrastructure that may be created under the control of others.

Regardless, more than any one-off project which can count on the infrastructure and community that already exists, you must sell the location first and foremost.*

[Yes, yes, yes, of course, there are exceptions: Pioneering product – like apartments where only townhouses have previously existed – also requires you to ‘sell the location’, for that type of product. New developments in an area experiencing (or about to) gentrification will also require you to help people understand why they should buy or lease in this downtrodden location.]

Branding the Location

Before anyone even considers the product you intend to deliver, let alone the credibility of the developer and builders behind delivery, they have to be interested in your location.

A master-planned project (consistent with the definition as I have used throughout the master-planned project series) IS a new location. And if it’s a new estate in the middle of the property desert – greenfield development, surrounded by actual greenfields – then no one knows this location even exists. Buyers won’t be searching in your location so they may never get to see the property you intend to sell. The solution is simple, you need to bring this new location to people’s attention. Sell them the dream location!

That is going to take a bit of effort and expense. Unless demand for your property product is on the parabolic upswing, where desperate buyers will sniff it out from cities away, expect to undertake a location branding and promotion exercise.

The first step of that location branding is to figure out what assets you have to promote. Borrowing from the accounting profession, the 4 line formula goes like this:

1. Take all your current location assets
2. And your current location liabilities
3. Calculate your location brand equity
4. Then, increase the location brand balance sheet by adding amenity profit

Location Assets. Why is your location the bee’s knees for your development? Is it a growth area where buyers can get in early and watch the infrastructure, as well as their real estate values, rise over time? Or are you so far away from the smog and chaos of the city? Closer than others to the ocean/river/lake/forest/mountains? Do you have views? More comfortable micro-climate? More transport options to get to the city, shopping, and employment? Or are you in the zone for a great school (that’s always a BIG asset ?

Yes, it’s not just physical assets. Include social and economic assets and contemplate with a wide brush. Perhaps the area is in part of a winning sports franchise, has lower property taxes or favorable development incentive tax policies.

Get the team to think hard enough and you will end up with a list of dozens.

Write down everything that is great about each asset. Take some pictures, video, drone captures, produce a one-page case study, hold interviews to discuss the ‘asset’ with local celebrities and business people – whatever you can think of to build up the collateral of location assets. This will be well worth the effort and is important for your marketing promotion later on. Needless to say, make sure you take your target market (the buyer’s and end-users) point of view. As a developer, you may have fallen in love with the knowledge that you have purchased a derelict timber factory and removed an eyesore from the community by flattening it to build a suburban office park. But will the tenants care?

Then prioritize the assets. That might be according to value, target market importance, wow factor, or whatever adds most benefit to your vision. The top three become instant forerunner topics for your key brand messaging when you come to promotion time.

Location Liabilities. It’s quite probable your location has some negatives. Just being in a place that’s new (or at least new for the product you want to deliver) for some will be negative. Less than desirable school zone? Surrounded by a lower socio-economic demographic than your target market? Lots of hills, and gullies, without views? Miles away from anything to do, like shopping and sports? Longest commute home into the setting sun on a one-lane crowded highway? High property taxes? Prone to flood/fire/slips? Site of a famous murder?

And again think broadly, liabilities such as restrictive laws on alcohol sales and restrictions on pets to protect native species might exist. Don’t let your buyers be the ones that alert you to their existence, without a strategy to curtail their importance.

Document the issues that these liabilities create. Being well informed and aware of the bias against your master-planned project’s location – before you go to market – gives you an opportunity to strategize how to deal with it.

Now prioritize the liability list in terms of their dream shattering potential. The top liabilities will be those most obvious and emotional. And they will be the target buyer’s key objections to your development’s location.

Calculate Location Brand Equity.

Now join the lists together. Log them in a spreadsheet, create a matrix, rank by colour – whatever works for you best to present and analyze the information. Here is a basic example.

Want to take it further? Then assign a score or a weighting to each item, even a percentage of the target market that you think will find this a deal-breaking or deal-making issue. Then calculate the total score. You might even create your own elaborate Urban Development Rating Tool. Regardless of your approach, the process in itself will help you identify where there are gaps that need to be plugged. Sometimes the asset will easily offset the liability, and other times that might be a stretch too far. For example, being close to forest walks probably will only marginally offset a long commute. But a brand new regional sized shopping mall down the road could easily trump a lack of trendy late night dining options in the area.

The combination of the assets and the liabilities is your net location brand equity. If we take my simple example above, the more dark green and the less dark red, the stronger your location brand balance sheet is.

Add Amenity Profit to the Brand Balance Sheet

Amenity is what you use to plug the gaps. Amenity is all the social, economic and physical infrastructure that adds value to your location. Adding amenity adds location brand equity.

Unless you are producing a fully gated community I am talking about public amenity. Amenity that creates the fabric of the location, as opposed to being exclusive use for one building or a row of houses. So it’s more than just part of the estate and often is external to the development. Whilst you as the developer most likely will have to pay for it, its usage or benefit will extend to the general public.

The approach to add amenity profit starts with three questions;

1. What location assets can we enhance with additional amenity? We could extend our forest walks to include a mountain bike track.
2. What location liabilities can we offset with amenities? We could negotiate with the education department to fast-track a new school. We could work with neighboring developers to complete the roading network to the freeway. And we could include some catalyst retail for a trendy restaurant operator. And by catalyst I mean help pay their rent, at least until things start pumping!
3. What new location assets will be created? Let’s add a lake. A golf course. The grandest of playgrounds. You know a neighboring developer will be creating their own trendy dining and entertainment cluster. If you want examples from the residential space, of themed amenity verging on the absurd (or maybe genius) then read about airstrips and waterskiing here or Zoo’s, Velodromes and Giving Trees here.

Some amenities to improve the location brand balance sheet will be under your full control. Whip out the credit card and start building tomorrow. But other amenities, especially the chunky transport infrastructure, will be subject to the decisions of government entities, the vagrancies of the local community and other developers.

Here’s our enhanced balance sheet updated.

Timing of Amenity. Plans change. The market tanks. Governments are kicked out. The council runs out of money. A new Mayor with an opposite agenda. The timing of new amenity and infrastructure that is provided by others is a decent risk with many master-planned projects. New amenity being delayed, completely redesigned or not eventuating at all can lay waste to your best (and horribly expensive) plans.

So the value to your location brand of new amenity and infrastructure should be discounted by both risk and time. The longer a buyer needs to wait, the less value to them. For example, a new primary/elementary school zone due to open in three years’ time does not hold much value for a family whose kids are ready to go to school next year. The proposed railway station that does not have government funds might only have a 50% probability of happening. The retail developer putting a shopping complex up next door may experience a market slowdown, delaying his plans – and shops for your buyers.

Don’t Forget the Profit. How do you know what and how much amenity to add, and when to stop? Some will be forced by regulation but there are so many assets you could deliver to improve your location.

Go and ask your sales team what amenity you should provide in to improve your locations brand. You might hear them recommending water fountains, bronze statues, a theme park, tree-lined avenues, fully mature palm trees and of course a lake with accompanying stone bridge and restored steamboat.

“Great what else” you enquire.

“Well can we pay to add another lane to the road fronting our project? That will help with the early morning congestion.”

“And an in-ground amphitheater, with olive grove and passionfruit plantation….”

Now, I’m sure this would more than likely add value, in a greenfield residential master-planned project or even a suburban office project but there is one minor problem.

Cash.

How much is it all going to cost? And am I going to get back more than I put in? That’s why I term it amenity profit.

The decision to add an amenity to strengthen your locations balance sheet is a simple algorithm:

If A > C then Y

A: Additional sales income generated because of amenity

C: Additional cost of amenity

Y: Yes, do it!

To paraphrase: in total, will people pay more for your real estate product because of additional amenity than the cost of providing that amenity. Easy.

Well, maybe not so easy. Calculating the cost is not difficult but trying to scientifically extract the incremental value add from a piece of amenity – isolated from all the other variables that affect real estate pricing, aka the market – well, good luck with that.

“So Ms sales consultant can I get 15,000 per house lot extra because there will be a lake down the road?”

“Mr leasing agent, will I get an extra $100 per square meter in rental because we have included ‘Japanese contemplation gardens’ around the base of each building?”

There is a lot of subjectivity involved. And a lot of developers’ artistic opinion. Any assessment of discretionary amenity (the infrastructure you choose to add, not obliged to because of planning regulations) must relate to the target market. Simplistically: the more affluent your target and the weaker the existing location brand balance sheet the more amenity assets you need to add. In low-cost affordable housing schemes, often irrespective of how little location brand equity you have, you just cannot afford to add many amenities. Sometimes when one comes to deliver all the amenity in the developer’s vision, it’s not a matter of delivering the dream, but that the developer is dreaming!

Mostly it comes down to what competition locations provide at similar price points plus your pioneering spirit and the corresponding depth of marketing budget. For example, 90% of the 50 top-selling master-planned communities in the United States in 2019 included a significant water amenity. Something serious to consider then, and probably enough data to approximate the lot premium achieved by providing this amenity to see if your target market pricing can justify it. But what about the amenity profit of ‘The Incline’ a 200-step outdoor staircase at the Meadows in Denver? or a BMX track?

A special note on cost. The design and construction cost of an amenity is only one component. If the amenity is on your project site, you have to account for the loss of Net Developable Area that is consumed. The profit generated by 50 more houses might be higher than the total premium achieved by taking out a hectare to build a lazy river!

And the time it takes to negotiate and gain consent from neighbors and the authorities, may also be a cost your project cannot bear.

Location Promotion

Then go forth and promote your location.

Promote all the existing assets focusing on the significant most valuable ones – the biggest drawcards to your location. Also, use those that are most interesting or unique which could lead to a great story in a marketing campaign and sales communications. For example, the site used to be an air-force fighter jet training base during WWII, or the famous poet used to live on a farm here. Once again, the angle has to have some buyer appeal.

Have the answers ready for the inevitable objections to your location. Do this for every existing liability and issue that has the potential to negatively influence a buyer’s decision.

• How can you turn a liability into a positive? A ‘cold and damp gully’, becomes a ‘wonderful shelter from the prevailing winds’. Or, a ‘lowly rated school zone’ becomes a ‘The high school has improved students grades for 6 years running now’.
• Maybe it’s best to ignore and don’t bring it up, except in the normal process of sales disclosure. For example, if the location was previously an old trash tip or had high concentrations of asbestos in the ground (now remediated of course).
• Can you deescalate its importance? “Look whilst there is no train station close by, the bus network is fantastic”. “Everyone who already lives around here loves the dining experience over there and Ubers back, no hassle, for less than $20.”

Promoting future amenity and infrastructure that is still a glint in an urban planner’s eye come requires stronger consideration. In the ideal world it all happens, on cue, and your sales team can set firm expectations in the minds of buyers – the dream you sell will become reality. However, when the provision of new amenity assets is in the hands of others, or the market changes dramatically so your pricing can no longer generate amenity profit (happens all the time, especially on master-planned projects that are not backed by deep pockets) the promised asset may be delayed or even terminated. So promotion of an amenity should not infer a promise unless you are certain.

As to the detail of how to promote, that’s too broad for this article and I won’t steal any real estate development marketers thunder just yet except to say the worse your brand balance sheet the more you are probably going to have to spend to generate interest. And in 2020 if you are a residential project, that could still mean old-school mass media like Television, radio, printed newspapers and billboards. As well as PR around open days, mayoral cutting the tape or someone semi-famous digging into the ground with a gold-painted shovel.

When to Promote

One strategy where you are creating a new project in the proverbial no-mans-land is to start promoting the location brand before you have product to sell. That could give you a head start in the market. Your promotion could frame it as the up and coming new location, and ‘watch this space’. Or you may wait to start promoting until some of your amenity profit is created – like a golf course or catalyst retail. Then potential buyers can experience tangible improvement in the locations balance sheet.

Where cashflow and budgets limit substantial investment prior to receiving income then you may be forced to launch location brand promotion concurrently with the real estate products you are selling.

Revisit the Location Brand Balance Sheet.

Your location brand balance sheet changes over time. You are adding assets. New liabilities arise. Others complete infrastructure projects. So updating the brand balance sheet, say annually, can generate good information to drive your marketing strategy and promotional activities for the following year.

Eventually, and likely well before you sell out you may no longer have to promote your location. Because you are now a known location and all the asset improvements have been delivered. Excessively promoting something everybody already knows is going to have diminishing returns. At that point in time, your master-planned project is just an existing part of its greater locations fabric. But don’t stop promoting your project!

A Note on Company Branding

Is the company brand so strong that location branding is somewhat superseded? This is when people buy on the strength of your company. Unlike most products though, real estate is firmly tied to the ground it sits on. So there are few circumstances where company branding will trump poor location equity. But once your location balance sheet is improved, if you are a well known and trusted quality deliverer of the product you promise, company branding can be a powerful stimulant to attract buyers and separate you from the competition.

And a Note on Estate Branding

In the largest greenfield master-planned projects – think new suburbs or an entire new town – location branding and estate branding are effectively one and the same. Therefore, a significant component of estate branding is the location branding we have already described. For smaller master-planned projects, now that you have burned the location into the hearts and minds of your buyer pool, you still need to convince them why your project is the place to buy or tenant.

In the next edition, we will discuss further differences in sales and marketing strategies for a master-planned project.

Cheers

Andrew Crosby

The DC: Master-planned Projects – All published editions.

#1 Roads
#2 Net Developable Area
#3 Feasibilities
#4 Stages
#5 Team Collaboration
#6 Architectural Design
#7 Scale Thinking
#8 Selling the Dream Location

P.S.

Now in this blurred world of social media versus professional media, my opinion versus my employer(s), salary versus side-hustle, middle of the business day versus 11pm on a Sunday evening, it can all get a bit confusing. So, here is my value proposition, and both complement and benefit each other.

• If you have a development site that you would like to sell some or all of, to develop yourselves, or to build houses then Universal Homes www.universal.co.nz might be able to help. We focus on delivering value-for-money homes in the ‘relatively affordable’ range, like the 1300 home westhills.co.nz or the 600 plus homes we have built at Hobsonville Point, or the thousands of others around Auckland over the last 60 years. Message me on LinkedIn at any time
  linkedin.com/in/ajcrosby .
• If you want to learn more about real estate / property development and a continuous improvement approach, with books and courses in development management to maximize profit and decrease risk then visit www.developmentprofit.com