· Total value: $140 million
· 181 house development
· Stages 1 and 2 sold out in six months; stage 3 launched six months earlier than scheduled.
Urban sprawl has seen Auckland’s most productive green belt being consumed by housing; and over the next 35 years, it is set to claim up to 31,270 hectares of the country’s prime horticultural land.
The pressures around Auckland’s expansion and demand for property has been especially intense. So, when iCLAW client The Du Val Group approached the firm’s directors Aasha Foley and Owen Culliney about regentrifying existing land, it was an opportunity to work as a team to help improve an area notorious with housing issues, rather than encouraging further sprawl into the most fertile and productive farmland.
Mountain Vista Estate is the answer to the city’s lack of supply and out-of-date housing. The development is an example of improving low socioeconomic suburbs and the quality of living standards, with its fresh new house designs.
“It is regentrification of existing land and neighbourhoods and bringing them up to scratch. The development will be offering 181 east and west-facing freehold terraced homes; on land that originally only housed three properties. And each of these 181 houses will house three to four people,” says Aasha.
Pre-iCLAW existing in 2016, Owen and Aasha were working with the client to acquire this property. It has been the firm’s largest-scale development to date.
The three-staged project saw stages 1 and 2 selling out within six months. Stage 3 is still available (as this is written, a mix of 81 townhouses and apartments), having just launched in July, six months earlier than scheduled.
“Usually, a stage is expected to need at least six months to sell. The cool thing about this project is that it's a huge development, 181 houses, and it's sold out extremely quickly,” says Owen.
“This project is somewhat different to other projects in the sense that the stages were to settle over time, but due to the project selling out so quickly, we have been dealing with 181 buyers acting for and their lawyers, all at once.”
The team’s experience from previous large-scale settlements makes them up as pros at facilitating multiple settlements in one go and on a single day thanks to their astute utilisation of resources, software, processes and contingency plans. The team roleplays the settlement day in preparation so that each member of the team knows and understands their role and what they must do at each step of the transaction.