110 | Southpoint Builders BUILDING From ‘tired’ to attractive modern living The 180sqm three-bedroom house clad in cedar, with a raked ceiling and gables in classic Central Otago style, is designed to fit in with the older architecture of neighbouring houses. T T Virginia Wright “I love turning something that’s not that nice looking into something that’s pretty cool.” Matt McStay had been building for close to 10 years before deciding to set up his own company, Southpoint Builders, in Gore early in 2024. Having started his apprenticeship with a company which mainly did commercial work he changed companies to get the experience in residential renovations and new builds he wanted to pursue. Today Southpoint Building still does renovations and new builds, along with the farm buildings, sheds, decks and whatever other projects they take on to fill any gaps in the schedule. Matt’s preference for new builds doesn’t stop him from getting a lot of satisfaction from the different renovations he takes on. “I love turning something that’s not that nice looking into something that’s pretty cool,” he says. That’s exactly what the Southpoint team did last year when they gutted a 60-year-old house in Gore. They moved walls to change the formerly confined floorplan into open plan living, built a new kitchen, and added a new bathroom with both bathrooms fully tiled by the Southpoint team. A new roof and windows combine with a layer of rough cast plaster over the existing brick cladding to freshen up the outside and complete the transformation of the formerly tired four-bedroom house into an attractive home ready for modern living. The same desire to improve and refine applies to the two sections that he and his fiancée Josie Smith bought together two years ago with an eye to the future. “It was sort of a wasteland in a way. They had pipes and services going through them and nobody wanted them. Then just over a year ago we bought the old, run-down neighbouring house that backs on to it,” says Matt. They’ve put the land into four titles and have started building a house to live in themselves. The 180sqm three-bedroom house clad in cedar, with a raked ceiling and gables in classic Central Otago style, is designed to fit in with the older architecture of neighbouring houses but with a modern twist, and to feel spacious and homely while not being overly large. They’ll build another three as time and money permits and turn that wasteland into an impressive subdivision ready for four families to call home. Matt knows of another two old houses in the neighbourhood destined to be replaced with new builds over the next few years. It’s a common pattern in the area partly necessitated by a scarcity of empty sections available in Gore to build on, Matt says. “It’s walkable to the town centre and there’s quite a bit happening around the neighbourhood. In two- or three-year’s time there’ll be four new, quite highly spec-ed houses and it’ll make the area look quite sharp.” Southpoint Building is now a team of four including Matt with another qualified builder, a qualified roofer who has almost finished his building apprenticeship, and another apprentice who’s just started. They’ve recently completed an architectural build in Wanaka which once again took a piece of land (400sqm) no-one wanted and built a 270sqm house with a lakeview enjoyed through floor to ceiling glazing and decking areas designed to make the most of what the section has to offer. Next up for Southpoint Building is a big renovation in Queenstown after which Matt might get to spend some time building his own home back in Gore although, the way the work keeps coming in, that’s far from certain.
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