Billion-dollar apartment builder Precinct Properties launches new $100m scheme

Stock exchange-listed Precinct Properties is planning $1 billion-plus of new Auckland apartments, today launching a new $100 million scheme.

CEO Scott Pritchard announced Pillars, a 20-unit, four-level project at 99 College Hill, St Mary’s Bay.

That new scheme is the ninth for the once solely commercial developer which built the $1b Commercial Bay.

Now, Precinct is becoming a big force in the apartment sector.

Pillars is to be four levels high, have 42 car parks, be built by Precinct Properties Wynyard in two blocks, on a 2364sq m site sold by Mansons TCLM, straddling College Hill and Dublin St.

It was designed by Jasmax. The special character of Dublin St means gabled roof forms and setbacks in the new apartments.

Precinct is expecting the price to be “in the late $3m” per Pillars apartment.

Pritchard also plans two new student accommodation apartment blocks for Queen St and Parnell.

Precinct got three apartment schemes when it bought 100% of apartment specialist Lamont.

Pritchard said those three schemes, in Parnell, Newmarket and Onehunga, had a combined value of $431m alone.

Nine projects will result in an estimated $1b-plus of land and buildings on completion. No units have yet been finished.

Precinct apartment plans, largest to smallest:

Yet times are tough in apartment-land. Other developers have laid off staff, deferred or delayed schemes or sold land.

The housing market remains so tough that Liam Dann wrote last weekend: “This isn’t a housing market meltdown, it’s a full-blown crash.”

Yet Pritchard is confident the timing is right.

“We’re in the early stages of a market recovery. For 20 homes, we would be looking to pre-sell four or five,” he said of Pillars.

Construction is anticipated to start in next year’s first half. Completion is due by 2028.

Precinct also has a far stronger balance sheet than many small-time developers, he indicated.

The company is ranked in the NZX top 20, and declared $3.3b of assets directly held in its 2024 result but said it had a further $1.6b of capital partnering assets under management.

It has a sleeping giant waterfront apartment scheme on Beaumont St, but has given few details.

Last August, it announced a conditional agreement with Orams Group to jointly develop a significant waterfront site at Wynyard Quarter. Small-scale commercial and large-scale residential is planned.

Precinct also said then it had an active build-to-sell residential development pipeline of $431m (the ex-Lamont properties) “and a total residential pipeline, excluding the downtown carpark, of circa $970m”.

Expansion of Auckland’s apartment market remains sluggish, data from this year’s first quarter show, although the build-to-rent sector is busy.

CBRE’s Tamba Carleton issued a report on the state of the sector, headed The worst is over but there’s no recovery yet.

Few projects are planned. Many have been shelved, she found.

The size of the forward-work pipeline shrank by 15 projects to 54 Auckland apartment developments now.

Ockham Residential, once a huge Auckland apartment force, has significantly reduced workloads along with Willis Bond and many others.

The sector is struggling to the point where last October, the Government introduced a backing via a Crown underwrite to bring new projects. Three got $75.5m in backing:

Anne Gibson has been the Herald‘s property editor for 25 years, written books and covered property extensively here and overseas.