Land owners could cash in on zoning
Owners of rural land on the outskirts of Auckland are getting set to cash in – in some cases making hundreds of thousands of dollars in profit in less than a year.
Zoning changes in Auckland’s Proposed Unitary Plan are helping unlock large tracts of land for development.
Among them is a 42.26 hectare piece of land on Fred Taylor Drive near the Westgate shopping centre just listed for sale, with consent for up to 1500 houses. The site includes 13ha of land zoned for terraced housing and apartments and 16ha zoned for mixed housing.
West Auckland businessman Henry Norcross is one of the 10 owners of Westgate Estate and is acting as the group’s spokesman. The Norcross family have owned land off Fred Taylor Drive since the 1980s. He reportedly paid $450,000 for his part of the land in 1985. It is now valued at $30 million.
Jeremy O’Hanlon, spokesman for Homes.co.nz, says land bankers were prepaid to pay a huge premium for sections of land close to residential living. ‘‘You’ll need deep pockets to play,’’ he says. ‘‘Recent sales of large plots close to the residential west have gone for more than $1m per hectare.’’
Norcross approached some of his neighbours about the idea of selling their land as one parcel many years ago.
‘‘It’s been a long process – it’s taken us four years to get everything in place so that we could sell. There have been many obstacles along the way and none of us realised quite how expensive it would be. But providing more housing in Auckland is important and it has to be done properly,’’ he says.
‘‘The owners were working towards getting a Special Housing Area in place, but the Unitary Plan has made the zoning changes happen for them. The site is ready to go – all the hard work has been done. It means a developer can get started right away and would have the option to put higher density dwellings at the Fred Taylor Drive end of the site, within walking distance of the Pak ‘n Save supermarket,’’ real estate agent David Mayhew, of JLL, says.
‘‘The zoning change shows that Auckland Council believes now is the right time to develop more housing in the northwest, to cater for the burgeoning population.’’
Auckland Transport anticipates the northwest will grow by 29,000 dwellings and 13,300 jobs over the next 30 years.