THE PROPERTY DEVELOPMENT REVIEW
construction costs with be further increases to house and apartment prices. Unlike houses, apartments in particular have seen little increases in value over the last few years. With current lengthy construction delays, projects being withdrawn, and the now increased population growth targets, we expect significant pressure and requirements for increases in supply. What is your secret to achieving the exceptional results that you have? The biggest key to any sale is identifying the right buyer who can pay a price premium. Although achieving high exposure through marketing is integral in every sale campaign, our main focus is to uncover special or unique buyers who are able to exceed what would otherwise be considered market price. We achieve this by constantly networking with property people throughout the industry, as well as collaborating with our various specialised teams including Valuations, Capital Transactions, Build-to-Rent, Hotels and Asia Markets. This ensures we uncover the right buyers which, as an example, has allowed us to negotiate over 10 off market sales valued at over $135,000,000 in the last 7 months alone. What are some of the most significant or rewarding projects that you’ve been involved in and why? The most rewarding deals take place when buyers with specific needs approach us to find a property suitable for them. We have recently been involved in securing property for residential developers, owner occupiers, childcare
groups, social housing providers, councils, and aged care / retirement groups. For each of these categories, we have gone through multiple processes where we received a requirement, collated appropriate properties and negotiated with owners leading to a situation where our clients end up with premium prices and our highly motivated buyers are able to secure properties that meet their needs in the required time frames. What advice would you give property developers today? In short, now is the time to purchase. Given the current headwinds surrounding project delivery, now is clearly a strategic time to buy. A number of local and global factors are impacting sentiment including rising interest rates to tame increasing inflation, supply chain issues/labour shortages impacting construction costs, and overseas conflicts effecting the global energy and food markets. As a result, site sales have slowed compared to what we have seen in the past, and we are seeing slower delivery rates as construction timelines are blown out and some projects have even been put on hold. While the entire delivery pool has slowed down significantly, the fundamentals of population growth and demand for housing, particularly in Victoria, remain strong. Melbourne is set to overtake Sydney as Australia’s largest city, however the current development market has not adjusted to this, and we would expect huge unmet demand to surface in the next 24-36 months.
September / October 2022 – 67
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