Multi-billionaire apartment developer, Harry Triguboff, has penned an article in The Australian calling for the NSW Government to “end the planning paralysis” so that he can build low quality dwellings, wherever he likes, and sell them to the Chinese. Otherwise, he can’t make money:
The paralysis that we have in the NSW planning department must disappear at once…
Our rents and prices have hardly moved in the last six years… Our councils demand standards which we cannot afford. The only time that we can make money is when mainland Chinese come. But now they are not coming and in fact are leaving Australia because of problems in China. So, we can’t make profit.
The only time we can build something is when there are some exceptional bureaucrats in control, but that is very rare and only applies to very few councils…
We need more housing than ever before. The quickest way is to build apartments. We in Meriton build 2000 units a year and we would be happy to build 5000, but we can’t get approvals that allow us to make a profit.
Highrise Harry’s bleating contradicts his testimony in December 2021, where he explained how Meriton had deliberately withheld apartment stock from the market to drive up prices:
The documents showed a 15 per cent increase in the number of investment units including serviced apartments on the Meriton books, with the company owning 13,314 units as at June 30.
Meriton owns more units than it sold for the year, which was 12,359 apartments or about 4 per cent less than it sold in 2020.
Mr Triguboff, who said he expected a $400m profit from leasing the units owned by Meriton next year, told The Australian: “I am holding a lot more than I am selling at the moment, and as the value of property goes up the value of what I have kept rises…
Mr Triguboff said demand for his apartments was outstripping supply, a problem he blamed on a lack of approvals by local government authorities in NSW and Queensland…
So according to Triguboff, demand for his apartments was outstripping supply due to planning constraints, yet he chose to hold onto 13,314 properties and drip-fed stock onto the market to maximise returns!
In other words, Triguboff has manipulated the market to ration supply and maximise his profits: typical cartel behaviour. Then he has the gall to blame the planning system for a ‘lack of supply’.
We truly do live in the real estate version of a narco-state. And Highrise Harry is the kingpin of the property cartel.
