Auckland property developer offering up to $20,000 to buyers in bid to sell apartments

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About 40 of the 210 Manaaki apartments are still to sell.
Photo: Supplied/Ockham

An Auckland property developer is offering cashback deals of up to $20,000 in a bid to move unsold apartments in a multimillion-dollar development.

There are about 40 unsold apartments in Ockham’s 210-unit Maanaki apartment block in Onehunga.

One-bedroom apartments in the development start at around $670,000, with those buyers eligible for $10,000 cash back.

The cheapest three-bedroom apartment is about $895,000, with buyers eligible for $20,000 cash back.

Ockham Residential co-founder Mark Todd told Checkpoint the property market had been an “arm wrestle” since the end of 2021, with sales down right across the sector.

“Three quarters of New Zealanders or more cannot really afford housing with the current interest rates,” he said.

While the costs for developers were no longer rising, they were not falling either, he said.

“I can’t build new houses for anything less than what they’re worth now, people can’t afford them, that’s why we’re seeing low sales volumes. So what we’re actually doing is showing a bit of manaaki, generosity of spirit.”

Ockham was also keen to sell the last Manaaki apartments to “free up” capital for its next developments, Todd told Checkpoint.

“If we have to we could sit on them for three years and lease them out, but it’s much more productive for us to build more apartment blocks.”

Ockham Residential co-founder Mark Todd.
Photo: www.ockham.co.nz

Todd said he was offering cashback deals instead of simply lowering the ticket price so he could “protect the value” of the apartments for Manaaki’s 170 existing owners.

When asked if he would be offering retrospective cashback deals to those owners, he said he would not.

“You can’t go back through in time. Everyone’s got to play their chips on the board,” he said.

“We’re the ones that borrowed $80-odd million and had $30-odd million of equity in that development to get it built. Everyone took a certain risk profile.”

The sales of those 170 apartments were settled two months ago without any problems, Todd said.

“What I would say is the purchasers from three years ago bought at lower prices, the price went up and now it’s come down again and it’s worth roughly what it was.”