Matarangi sales near $8m

By ANNE GIBSON

Sections worth $8 million will be sold at the Coromandel resort of Matarangi in the financial year to June 30, says its developer.

Mark Hotchin, chairman of private investor Axis Properties and a business associate of Eric Watson, said 48 Matarangi properties had sold between last December and February this year.

"We are headed for a record annual sales figure of $8 million in the financial year to June 30, which is remarkable for a development that is one of the oldest in the region," he said.

Hotchin is executive chairman of Hanover Group, a private finance company he and Watson own. Hanover is the holding company for a string of Watson investments, including Elders Finance and Matarangi's owner, Axis Properties.

Hotchin said a quarter-hectare waterfront section at Matarangi that fetched $350,000 in the mid-1990s had sold for $1.2 million.

The resort has more than 1000 sites scattered along its 4.5km beach frontage.

Sections on the new area away from the beach but lining Matarangi's golf course are selling for between $80,500 and $165,000.

Axis has 80 golf-course sections that it is marketing as The Links.

Hotchin said Axis had sold 30 of these, with 67 per cent of sales in the last year being to Aucklanders.

He said former Axis chief Greg Wilkinson had left the company to pursue a property development career outside the Hanover group.

Axis had more than $200 million worth of properties, Hotchin said, including 280 Queen St, Ubix House in Khyber Pass Rd, 73 Symonds St and the Bush Inn shopping centre in Christchurch.

Matarangi has had a string of owners in its 30 years, each leaving a footprint.

It was conceived by developers Ken Woodhead and Warrick Keddle in 1978.

It then passed to Rothmans, then Magnum/DB. By 1994, DB Group had sold it to South Island investors - David Smallbone, Howard Paterson, Murray Valentine and Philip Burmester - who reported $8 million worth of sales, or 50 sections, between December 1, 1994 and February 3, 1995.

They sold Matarangi to Hotchin and by 2000, Axis Property Group and Wilkinson were marketing a series of golf-course duplex units.

Axis was keen to kickstart another wave of subdivision, even though some residents were trying to stop expansion, citing flooding problems, sewage overload, a seasonal shortage of fresh water and a threat to bird and sea life as reasons to rethink the peninsula's development.

Hotchin said residents who had expressed concerns three years ago had either moved elsewhere or shelved their opposition.