Heartbreak for an owner in the derelict The Ridge; how the high-profile boss of active apartment developer Ockham Residential sums up the market in a four-letter word; Goodman Property Trust hit by a $485m devaluation; Deloitte new office fit out done in Auckland. All this is in the today.
Property Insider: Heartbreak from The Ridge apartment purchase; Ockham boss has four-letter word for market; Goodman suffers $485m devaluation; Deloitte fit out done
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Jezowska, an anaesthetic technician, told Property Insider this month how she and her family were considering leaving New Zealand due to the heartbreak caused by buying what turned out to be a unit in a defective building.
“This was our first home. It’s a disaster. We are in constant stress because we cannot pay the half a million dollars that they are expecting us for a 65sq m apartment,” she said on initial plans to fix the building which were abandoned when cost estimates were received.
She appeared in the second series of the three-part documentary A Living Hell: Apartment Disasters by John Gray and Roger Levie of the Home Owners and Buyers Association. That screens on Neon and because it was funded by NZ On Air is now free to view, off Sky’s paywall on Sky Go.
The Ridge is near Leighs Construction’s Auckland offices and the Auckland Central Police Station off College Hill Road, below the ridge of the hill in Ponsonby.
Cameron Melhuish and James Were of Bayleys are advertising the apartments as “the ultimate city fringe blank canvas”, saying zoning allows for a wide range of uses.
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That indicates the building could be demolished, although the agents didn’t say that.
“Body corporate instructs the sale of the freehold land and existing structure ... as is, where is,” advertising said of the seven-level block with 60 car parks.
Expressions of interest are due by March 14 for the ex-office block.
The documentary said owners had spent about $15 million trying to fix the block.
Research has shown that half of New Zealand apartment buildings suffer from some form of defect, the series said.
The show features buildings in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown.
A boss at one large business told Property Insider his company was considering buying The Ridge but the land would be far better used for commercial purposes, not residential, he said.
The business would pay under $10m for it, he said, but nothing had been settled yet.
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The Ridge remains on the market and is a memorable and highly disturbing example of the misery defective buildings inflict on people’s lives.
Developer downbeat on sales, upbeat on architecture
“Sales are still s...,” says Ockham Residential’s Mark Todd on the Auckland apartment market generally.
He was speaking after last Friday’s opening of The Greenhouse at 20 Williamson Avenue, Ponsonby.
“There’s still a housing recession going on in terms of sales,” said the green T-shirt-wearing Todd who fronted the opening before around 100 people including city councillors and leaders in the sector.
Late last year, Ockham repaid deposits and cancelled The Feynman, a 165-unit project planned for 339-359 Great North Rd and around 20 per cent of units at its new 210-unit Manaaki, Onehunga, are still to be sold. That equates to about 45 apartments.
Asked what would happen to that Great North Rd site, Todd indicated it would be retained.
He was downbeat on the market, saying it was in a depressed phase but he was upbeat about great architecture, hoping that one day Auckland could be a city like New York or Chicago where people travelled specifically to admire building design.
The Greenhouse is a $130m project where Ockham had borrowed $65m, he said.
The Tania Wong-designed building is certainly stylish. Ground-floor windows feature a chevron motif.
The street verandah underside cladding is imprinted with an art deco design.
Such features make the building eye-catching, although there were tripping hazards at both the Williamson Ave and Pollen Street entranceways on Friday: lips on joinery were raised and proud of the floor.
But Ockham construction people at the opening said that would soon be rectified with metal ramps on either side of those hazards.
The opening was MCed by new chief executive Will Deihl. Previously, Ockham’s head of content and communications Peter Malcouronne has done that job at many other openings.
Of the 101 units in the nine-level block clad in 150,000 green glazed Italian bricks, 21 units are left to be sold, he said.
An Ockham sales sheet recorded most units sold but prices were not declared on all of those. No details about Todd’s own double-penthouse levels were on the sheet.
To give you an idea of what some Greenhouse sales were, here are some examples:
- A 70sq m two-bedroom level-one apartment sold for $1.62m and comes with one car park. Annual body corporate fees on that place are estimated to be $5763;
- A 61sq m one-bedroom level-one unit with a flexible-room and one car park sold for $1.4m and incurs body corporate fees of $4965/year;
- A 43sq m level-three studio unit without a car park sold for $870,000 and incurs $3085/year body corporate fees;
- A 46sq m level-seven unit with no car park sold for $1.05m and incurs body corporate fees of $3724/year.
Todd indicated the poor apartment sales market would not stop construction beginning of the first block in what is planned to be the multibillion-dollar Maungārongo community.
That is the ex-Unitec land at Carrington where Ockham and its iwi partner begin with the new Toi, a 65-unit seven-level building.
“We’re building the first two buildings and the piling rigs will be there within a month.”
Ockham achieved so much last year: “We’re proud to have delivered 481 new homes across five projects in the last 12 months, despite the market challenges”, its marketing says.
An overseas reader asked why The Greenhouse opening was so important: it’s partly because Ockham has been so busy and such a force in bringing apartments to Auckland but it is also due to the business taking the higher moral ground on architecture.
Even industrial does it tough now
The star of the sector, industrial real estate, is also suffering, if NZX-listed giant Goodman Property Trust’s February 13 announcement is any measure.
That flagged $258m revaluation or 5.4 per cent reductions in the fair value of the trust’s property assets since September but a huge $484.5m or 9.7 per cent drop annually.
James Spence, chief executive, said 99 per cent of the portfolio is leased.
Goodman’s assets were valued at $4.5 billion, showing the might of the business.
Across the Tasman, the business is building multi-level logistics centres and says it might do so here if the market is right.
Maybe that’s not happening any time soon, given current market conditions.
Done: Deloitte’s new Auckland office fit out
Project managers and advisory services business the Building Intelligence Group said it had completed the office fit out for Deloitte in the refurbished Deloitte Centre, One Queen.
Deloitte is the first office tenant to move into the building on levels 15 to 20 where it has 7500sq m of premium office space. A building blessing was held last month by Ngāti Whatua Ōrākei.
Deloitte is not the first in: IHG’s InterContinental Auckland opened on January 30 with 139 guest rooms, reception, a bar and a restaurant a few floors below.
The 21-level ex-HSBC building on Quay St, owned by Precinct Properties, got a $310m renovation in a contract won by L.T. McGuinness.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald’s property editor for 24 years, has won many awards, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
