ghs wrote:This development raises an interesting question which would be interesting to discuss.
What level of sales do developers /agents need in order to commence development of a project ?
I would guess that it would normally be about 50%.
On this development we see 25 of 157 apartments sold which equals 16 percent.
It really comes down to a few things.
1. how is the developer financing it? If it is Bank debt then Banks at the moment are looking for 100% debt coverage (i.e $1 of pre seales for every $1 of lending) remembering pre-sales will be reviewed - too many to 1 person or many from o/s will be questioned.
2. How much can the developer afford to spend on holding costs? within 12 months of completion you have the government and it's various levels knocking on your door asking for their statutory charges - things like Land tax are going to kill any developer who builds an apartment but does have the majority sold - this is something the ACC could address (or the state government) if they want to encourage developments in the CBD with a higher risk profile.
2.a)To get around the issue of non-selling you engage a serviced apartment model, gets you income from day 1 and helps service the loan/pay statutory - the problem then is the prospective buyers get turned off - who wants to live in a hotel?
3. what is the market acceptance of your product - sure you achieve 100% debt coverage and you can afford to hold the apartments - the issue comes in that the apartments you haven't pre-sold don't have market acceptance - i.e you might sell all the 2 bedroom apartments to get debt coverage but none of the 3 bedroom ones - your profit lies in the 3 bedroom ones, but you'll never crystallise it because the market doesn't exist.
they are just a small number of the issues going into a development - at the moment the biggest problem with apartments in Adelaide is the complete lack of a market - just look at the discounting going on a certain developments (which killed the market in the first place due to an inferior product)