When I started at the ‘company’ we were finishing off about 30 terrace homes on contract build, when I left we had almost completed another 120 terraces and apartments with another 40 ready to build vertical when the market was to pick up. That’s the Northcote story.
Well actually I had another Northcote story. Once upon a time, at HNZ, I was the person responsible for trying to find a PPP development partner for the entire precinct. The issue was a big pipe was required and no one had the cash. And we literally couldn’t give the opportunity away.
Fast forward over a decade and Northcote sure has pumped the homes in, courtesy of HLC and then KO and the rest of us who brought sites and dabbled with kiwibuild.
Learnings:
Design review panels (5 of them) and RC took 13 months for us on the apartments. That was red tape gone crazy. And council and KO not seeing eye to eye. What a cluster. And what a massive risk when the market changes abruptly. At least KO were favorable to renegotiate with, albeit the boat missed on the market and the govt first home equity share programmme.
Can sell a townhouse there all day long every day.
Better to price realistic on day one, especially if profit still results, rather than follow a market down -should one be allowed to do so.
Build to hold and rent out is a great downmarket strategy -should one be allowed to do so.
Put the joint owned access way in before going vertical. Yep it might need some repairs but makes everyones life on site easier.
Top floor apartments are the bomb for so many reasons. Sacrifice for a few stairs.
A million other things, you will just have to engage Xpect to find out!
