A home by Mike Greer Homes on Gardiners Rd, Harewood, Christchurch. This home was built this decade. Photo / Mike Greer Homes
A home by Mike Greer Homes on Gardiners Rd, Harewood, Christchurch. This home was built this decade. Photo / Mike Greer Homes
The majority owner of New Zealand’s second-busiest residential builder says the business is not suffering in the recession.
“What downturn? You need to get down to Christchurch,” said Mike Greer, 51, who founded the locally headquartered Mike Greer Homes business 31 years ago.
His business built 795 residences valued intotal at $299 million in the April year, according to data business BCI, which ranks 152 New Zealand residential builders according to output.
Mike Greer Homes was only trumped by G.J. Gardner, which built 837 residences valued at $462m completed in year to April 2025.
But Greer said the BCI numbers did not reflect the much larger scale of his house-building business, which sells house-plus-land packages.
Mike Greer, who founded Mike Greer Homes and is based in Christchurch. Photo / LinkedIn
The data was only based on residential construction, not sale of the land that went with the homes.
“The houses are one thing but we also create 300 new sections annually from subdivisions and $200m of commercial work via rest homes, retirement villages, offices, etc.”
Greer also owns Miles Construction, building in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
He owns 82% of Mike Greer Homes, having sold 18% to fellow Canterburian Ben Gough last decade.
A Mike Greer home at Beachlands.
Asked about more newly founded house-builders in his region, he says: “Years ago, I said I don’t think anyone will get to the level I am. All these young guys popped up with revolutionary ways of raising money and built scale rapidly, which surprised me. They weren’t relying on the big four Aussie banks to get stuff done.”
He is less reliant on those banks, he says, having built substantial capital in the business.
“I’ve been doing this for 31 years. I’m building quite a lot in Australia and have been for the last eight years – townhouses in southeast Queensland on the Gold Coast under the Breakwater Homes brand.”
Mike Greer Homes is headed here by chief executive Iain Munro.
Its model is different from others in the top 10 list of New Zealand’s busiest builders.
“We are not like other group home-builders in New Zealand that run a franchise-based model. We run the joint-venture branch model, where Mike Greer Homes owns 51% of each regional branch and 100% of the two largest branches in Christchurch and Auckland,” the company says.
Mike Greer has a holiday home at Lake Hayes, pictured in the foreground with Lake Wakatipu in the background. Photo / Getty Images
“We just build them and worry about selling them later. We always do well in a tougher market. All the mum and dad speculators disappear. They get a fright.”
House-building slumped 3.8% in the latest year, Stats NZ says.
There were 33,530 new homes consented in the year to May 2025, down from 34,851 in the year ended May 2024.
May’s annual consent total is the second-lowest for any month since the end of 2018.
The Woolshed dining and restaurant venue in a historic building at Ayrburn. Photo / Jason Oxenham
“The record for the annual number of new homes consented was 51,015 in the year ended May 2022. While consent numbers fell sharply after that peak, they have levelled out over the past year,” Stats NZ economic indicators spokeswoman Michelle Feyen said on July 1.
But for Greer, the slump presents new opportunities.
He has a holiday home at Lake Hayes and is impressed with Winton Land’s Ayrburn, counting himself fortunate to regard this as potentially his local.
Anne Gibson has been the Herald‘s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.
