focusinterview.
Out to Lunch
with Susie Boswell
TREVOR SUITOR P O R T M AC Q UA R I E ’ S E N J OY I N G A B I G R E SI DE N T I A L CON ST RUCT ION BO OM . E X I ST I NG HOUS E S , TO O, A R E BE I NG S NA PPE D U P FA S T AT H E A LT H Y P R I C E S . F U R T H E R , T H E VA L U E O F - A L L - D E V E L O P M E N T A P P L I C AT I O N S , I N D O L L A R S , H A S N E A R D O U B L E D I N T WO Y E A R S . S U S I E D I S C U S S E S T H E B U OYA N T M A R K E T T R E N D W I T H A N U P B E AT L O C A L B U I L D I N G P I O N E E R .
P
ort is flavour of the month - of the past 12 months in fact. In the most recent financial year the value of residential construction applications rose by more than 27 per cent to $143 million, an average $3 million a week over 48 weeks. Excluding intrinsic materials, that’s a lot of chaff going into the local economy, a lot of people moving in (many from Sydney), or moving up (upsizing, or upgrading existing homes) or moving on (downsizing into new villas or “over-55s” condos). We’re also heavily searched, among ex-Sydney locations, by buyers using real estate portals seeking existing dwellings. Good houses, especially “beachside”, offered below a certain price point are selling quickly. Housing expansion’s been big recently, I suggest to long-time local builder Trevor Suitor. “Mm, it has!” he agrees. Is it the greatest ever? “In the 1990s Port Macquarie was building close to 500 homes a year. Then we had periods in the past 10 years when we’ve been down to 200. There were many factors in that regression. One was a boom period in units: a lot of people moved into units, creating a big second-hand supply of housing, which affected the building industry. And some of the available land wasn’t coming through in the normal flow of things and that created a land shortage that created problems. They’ve been some large residential lifestyle villages, close to 800 or 900 [units] such as
24 greater port macquarie focus.
Dahlsford Grove, Newport Gardens, and at Bonny Hills, so the over-55s moved into them. Those are big numbers; they’d be traditional home or villa buyers: that’s an effect on the industry. So a few factors kept numbers down. But now we’re back over the 500 houses.” The building industry in general - in all sectors, including commercial, residential, multi-dwelling, lifestyle villages - is busier than ever, in a much bigger market. The only exception, Suitor reckons, is contract housing ... yet busier probably only for a brief period in 2000 when clients signed contracts in a pre-July 1 GST frenzy. Suitor’s Pycon Homes & Constructions is one of only several home-grown builders in the emerging Port township of 35 years ago still operating under the same family ownership. It’s 43 years since, newly married to Lynne, he arrived here from Sydney in 1972 with a background in banking and accountancy and began work in real estate. Towards the end of the ’70s into the early ’80s he started developing land subdivisions. One was around the Summit Road-Bangalay Drive area of Lighthouse Beach - then mostly open fields - where he filled, compacted and reshaped a big quarry that had been used for road base, and created building blocks. By 1980 he’d become a commercial builder of light industrial property. Prominent landmarks such as those home to Furniture One, The Good Guys, Captain Snooze, Lachlan House (site of the NRMA offices) on Horton Street, Growers Market and, more
lately, Columba Cottage child care centre and many more - all Pycon work. “Until about ’89 we built predominantly commercial buildings. We moved into housing in 1990 and it became a big part of the company in ’99.” Most builders then, including Pycon, employed their own team of licensed tradesmen on staff, not contractors like today. Over the ensuing 25 years Pycon has built an estimated 750 dwellings: among them, 60 homes on the canals alone, Sala townhouses at North Harbour and, one of its specialties, multi-dwellings such as Sienna Grange Retirement Village, Governors Retirement Resort, and 21 new villas in Toorak Court. It’s expanded its operating area to cover from Gloucester-Forster to Grafton and beyond. In November it opened an office and display home in Coffs Harbour; it’s now building some 100 dwellings a year. The walls of its offices, overlooking the Hastings River estuary, are covered in top industry awards. And it’s one of 94 defined major builders in NSW who account for around half of the state’s entire housing market. This concentration’s partly due to the nowheavy regulation of the building industry and of homeowners’ insurance provisions. “We’ve a large insurance cover. And with it comes a lot of responsibility, much greater accountability: governance, reporting, to the broker, insurer and the government organisation SICorp [NSW Self Insurance Corporation, which oversees the
six-year indemnity]. You’re under a microscope. We have to maintain extremely accurate reporting: good in-house accounting, a computer system with accurate data on weekly cash flows, profit and loss reports, estimating, job costings, all of that. Bankruptcies now are a lot fewer and redundancy rates are high: companies move out of the industry because they can’t meet the requirements. You have to be capitalised. You can’t just shake hands and build a house for someone; those days are gone. “When there’s land available and approved, and willing developers, there’s building activity. In Port Macquarie we’ve seen an unusual amount of land available for building over the past few years, and that seems to be the case for the near future. In the early ’90s, for instance, a very good town planner had the foresight to rezone all the land from the CBD, basically, out to Lighthouse, which created a large available land bank - the Crestwoods, Dahlsfords, Green Meadows, all those estates: that period of building, 1990 to 2000, was very buoyant because of available land. “There are other factors like the economy, interest rates and so on. Sometimes all of those factors will come together - interest rates low, duplication of the Pacific Highway for example, and available land - to create a larger supply ... and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment.” NEXT TIME: What the future holds for Port Macquarie.