Simplicity KiwiSaver funds apartment “villages” in Auckland’s Point, England, with each two- and three-bedroom home costing an average of $450,000 to build.
That’s less than half the price of the 300 homes in Arlington, Wellington, that Kainga Ora said on Thursday it planned to build at a cost of $296 million, or just under $1 million each.
The Point England apartment villages are the result of an agreement under which not-for-profit KiwiSaver provider Simplicity purchased the business, intellectual property and expertise of developer NZ Living and moved it into a new company called Simplicity Living, owned by Simplicity.
Simplicity chief executive Sam Stubbs says NZ Living owners Shane and Anna Brealey could have sold their business for more than $100 million.
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Instead, the Brealeys reached an agreement with Simplicity for access to KiwiSaver’s vendor financing to enable the construction of 10,000 affordable long-term rentals over the next 10 years.
“They are some of the biggest philanthropists in New Zealand that you would ever know,” Stubbs said.
“It’s a huge homecoming,” he said.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
Shane Brealey of NZ Living has effectively donated his company to have thousands of affordable rentals built to house families in warm, dry homes at fair rents.
The Simplicity KiwiSaver funds will own the villages built by the partnership, all built on the same plan as the Point England villages.
The flats would be made of concrete and brick to last at least 100 years, far longer than the 50-year standard for which most New Zealand homes were built, Stubbs said.
They would also be built with a high level of thermal efficiency so that residents would barely have to heat them, even in winter, he said.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
Sam Stubbs, Managing Director of Simplicity, at a site in Point England, Auckland, where hundreds of attractive, sustainable and high-quality apartments are being built at a cost of around $450,000 each, including land on which they are located.
The Brealeys will manage the developments for at least the next five years.
Brealey said each apartment village takes the equivalent of two and a half days per apartment to build.
The speed at which apartments went up was partly key to their low cost, which included the cost of land, he said. “It takes about 10 and a half weeks from floor slab to finish.”
Chris McKeen / Stuff
NZ Living’s efficient construction method is fast, water efficient and doesn’t even involve cranes.
NZ Living’s low-maintenance concrete and brick building technique for constructing three-storey apartment buildings did not involve cranes, he said.
And it only produces a quarter of the waste of traditional building techniques, he said.
The model did not involve cramming apartments into sites, with a third of the covered land set aside for communal gardens and shared space, to give children places to play and families places to hang out. the outside.
“It’s cheaper, faster and better. It ticks all three boxes, yet the industry doesn’t. I tried to give that IP address,” Brealey said.
“I thought, ‘What’s the point of having all these technical abilities, and so on. We will team up with Sam and his team and do all of this for a non-profit to create a 100+ year old product, so go family after family after family, help them with a discounted rental to save,” Brealey mentioned
Simplicity and the Brealeys were introduced by venture philanthropist Sir Stephen Tindall, the founder of The Warehouse.
Brealy said he and his wife had done well in the construction industry, their adult children were all self-employed, and his deal with Simplicity was their way of giving something back to the country.
Simplicity Living’s goal was not to develop homes for sale, but to have Simplicity KiwiSaver funds become long-term owners of apartments for rent under the Simplicity brand, Stubbs said.
These would produce income and capital gains for Simplicity’s KiwiSaver investors.
Kainga Ora/Provided
Renderings of the Kainga Ora Arlington development project in Mount Cook, Wellington.
Stubbs said Simplicity Living homes will provide affordable long-term rentals for families and individuals.
“We want people to like living there. We don’t want them to change every year or two. It’s crazy. You just get a healthy relationship of trust over time. This is happening in the UK, Spain, Germany and France,” Stubbs said.
“The model doesn’t exist in New Zealand, but it does exist overseas. There is not a single new idea here,” he said.
Chris McKeen / Stuff
Near Maungarei Mount Wellington, the construction of the Simplicity KiwiSaver-funded apartment villages revolves around stairwells. The houses are designed to be low maintenance, thermally efficient and to last over 100 years. Unlike many apartments, living rooms and bedrooms are designed to have windows on two walls for light and air circulation.
Eventually, it would consider providing people with occupancy rights, which could prove attractive to people seeking an alternative to a retirement village later in life.
Brealey and Stubbs also hoped that Simplicity Living could teach New Zealand how to build livable homes at reasonable prices.
“It’s very simple repetition, which means there are economies of scale, which means these things will cost less to build,” Stubbs said.
The simplicity compensated for the construction with the planting of native trees, Stubbs said, although Brealey said the longevity of the buildings, combined with their low maintenance and heating requirements, translates into good environmental credentials for the building. entire life cycle of buildings.