38 | Housing needed for tradies Hanley’s Farm sits on a three-kilometres long stretch of land 10 minutes from Frankton, facing north-west and taking in the sights of Lake Wakatipu, Deer Park Heights and The Remarkables Range. Golden Homes Southern Lakes: RCL Group - Hanley’s Farm T T Hugh de Lacy DEVELOPMENT Open your mind to the possibilities. Wages or Contract Building available, contact Ethan Smith on ethan.smith@goldenhomes.co.nz or 0274 599 184 Golden Homes uses Zog steel framing, which is 1/3 the weight of traditional 90mm timber framing! Added bonus, they do not absorb moisture - no more straightening! Attention Builders: are you sick of getting home with a sore body? Queenstown’s chronic labour and accommodation shortages, no less than home-buyers flocking to the southern tourist haven, are the target of Golden Homes’ building activities at the sprawling Hanley’s Farm residential sub-division adjacent to Jack’s Point in the southern Lakes District. Golden Homes’ South Island licence-holder, Ethan Smith, has already built more than 200 homes on the 1800-section development, and he says that a notable feature is the number of clients stipulating that a separate accommodation facility be part of the design. “The irony of the situation is that even though wages are really good, there’s not enough accommodation in Queenstown, and because of that we desperately need housing for building workers,” Ethan says. Hanley’s Farm sub-division was launched about six years ago, offering section sizes mostly in the 300m2 to 500m2 range, with some bigger ones up to 4500m2. The project is in its final stages, being nearly sold out, and Golden Homes is offering house builds in a price range beginning at $400,000 and rising to over $1 million. The developer of Hanley’s Farm is the privately-owned RCL Group, formed in 2013 and operating in Australia and New Zealand. Hanley’s Farm sits on a three-kilometres long stretch of land 10 minutes from Frankton, facing north-west and taking in the sights of Lake Wakatipu, Deer Park Heights and The Remarkables Range. Most of it is rolling country, but there are some steeper sites that require designs prepared specially for them, something that Golden Homes prides itself on. The sub-division is presently building its own café next to “a really high-end playground with the best of equipment,” Ethan says. “It’s a fantastic spot with Jack’s Pont village being developed right alongside, and that’ll be a great asset to the region. “The Hanley’s Farm developers have done a great job, aiming at providing genuine family homes for which we provide a huge range of designs, though typically we custom-design at Hanley’s Farm to match the section with the client’s requirements. “A lot of our clients want a unit attached either for secondary income or for inter-generational living, and we see that as a factor in eventually overcoming not only the accommodation shortage here, but the labour shortage too,” Ethan says. Ethan presently has a dedicated building labour team of about a dozen, working in three gangs, but if he could locate and house them he’d love to have the workers to further boost his labour force. Golden Homes is active not only in Queenstown but also in sub-divisions on the fringes of Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka. In Hawea there is a development similar in size to Hanley’s Farm, being produced by Universal Developments, a subsidiary of Lane Hocking which has no fewer than three big sub-divisions on the go in the area. RCL has also bought land and is planning another sub-division at Homestead Bay, “and we look forward to working with them on that,” Ethan says. “With the housing crisis in Queenstown we need developers like RCL creating land opportunities for us to build on. “Along with the likes of Hanley’s Farm, Homestead Bay will be just the sort of development that will make it possible for more workers to find accommodation in Queenstown - and we need to get it done so we can find more builders,” Ethan says. “The irony of the situation is that even though wages are really good, there’s not enough accommodation in Queenstown, and because of that we desperately need housing for building workers.”
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