From the Desk of Mark Jewell.
Happy New year to you all. I hope you are all surviving the heat and probably wondering what’s been going on over the Christmas period? Well, I’m here to tell you, it been business as usual from my end.
General inquiries, going out and meeting people who have signed up to secure their forever home has been great over the past eight weeks. I have even been corresponding with a gentleman in the UK who is very keen to secure one as he is coming back to WA to live and loves the concept.
Its certainly rewarding to get new interest and enthusiastic commitments from people over what traditionially would be a quiet period.
So moving forward we have our first seminar is to be held on the 19th of February this month and already the response to bookings for it have been the best so far at this early stage, so if you havent booked and want to know what we are all about don’t miss out!
John Green our Project Director has given a detailed update as to what’s happening on the development side of things and explaining the many new challenges we are overcoming to be able to crank up these two long awaited Lifestyle Communities
As always, if you would prefer to chat with me at your home or a local coffee shop rather that attend one of our seminars, I am more than happy to make a time to meet with you and discusss any queries.
Project Update
By John Green
I’m pleased to advise that we have appointed Mike Enslin, CEO of Kastle Group as our new Project Manager. Mike will take over from the great work of Brenton Downing, who paved the way for the successful delivery of all Providence WA projects. Mike comes with a wealth of experience in built form, project management and has been working with us on Mandurah, Haynes and Piara Waters (our first ‘Buy only’ Resort) since inception, so he has a thorough understanding of the requirements for all projects. Undoubtedly, Mike will be a valuable asset to the team, and we welcome him aboard with open arms.
Having received Development Approval for both Mandurah and Haynes, and after receiving feedback from our potential clients, we are adjusting the mix of home designs in each Community to ensure they meet demand.
To give you an idea, the Development Approval for Mandurah has a list of 26 conditions while Haynes has 31, all of which will need to be met. These include items such as the Urban Water Management Plan, Construction Management Plan, Noise Management Plan, Mosquito Management Plan and Bushfire Management Plan to name a few. We are also required to provide plans to the satisfaction of the City for road widening, intersection upgrade, traffic management, crossover design, landscape planning and tree retention to name a few. Not to mention the building permits for the Clubhouse, boundary treatments, homes, carports and alfresco areas etc. The list is long, but not overwhelming, and I am sure you can imagine that we are quite busy at the moment.
Most of the conditions must be done before work can start on site while others before occupancy can occur. Of course, all the detailed designs mentioned in the last newsletter for fire, water, power, gas, sewer, roads, telecommunications etc have to be done before we can start on site and we are working hard to get that completed as quickly as possible.
As I am sure you would have seen and heard, the current building industry is being severely hampered by the highest demand we’ve seen in years. This, coupled with material and labour shortages, freight restrictions, shipping issues and the recent rail problems has created a perfect storm, culminating in delays in almost every sector. The subsequent price increases due to lack of supply and high demand has made building challenging to say the least.
While we have done our best to avoid delay, we have not escaped the impact of the current market, which puts us well behind where we first planned to be. We are working very hard to be able to provide you more certainty over when construction will start and therefore when your new homes will be ready for occupation. We do apologise for the delays but as you can see, there is a lot of work to be completed behind the scenes before you will see anything on the ground.
To this end, what we can say is that we are making progress (albeit slower than we’d like) and we truly value your patience. We hope you will stick with us through this journey as we are sure you will agree that it will be worth the wait in the long run. For those who have already paid their deposit, thank you, you have secured your rentals at a much lower rate than others, because, as the costs of building the community goes up, rental prices will go up accordingly. However, if you took the opportunity and got in early, you’ve got the advantage of lower rents which will no doubt be in your favour and definitely worth holding onto.
Operations Update
By John Green
We hope you had a great Christmas and enjoyed a safe and happy festive season.
We’ve been busy in the background preparing for the next seminar on 19 February, as well as getting all the DA conditions met and designs completed before we can get that first shovel in the ground.
Understandably, December and January have always been quieter months for us as people tend to focus on Christmas, their loved ones and entertaining, rather than thinking about their accommodation solutions. However, despite the normal slow down over these months, this year we still had almost 60 enquires and have already got 58 people registered for the next seminar which is great to see. Both the team and I continue to be pleasantly surprised at how popular the idea of being able to rent in a lifestyle community is.
Our normal application process is progressing well, but it does take time because we are very thorough given we offer 10 year leases, so please don’t be disheartened if you are still waiting to hear from us as we do have a comprehensive process to complete, which includes visiting you in your existing home. Our Board continues to issue approvals at each Board Meeting, and we are delighted with the high quality of applicants we’re continuing to see. We are really excited about how good these communities will be to live in.
We have had a couple of queries regarding our deposits, so I would just like to remind everyone that the deposits being paid to hold sites are held by our solicitor as “stakeholder” in a trust account and not by us. That means we don’t have any access to those funds other than as per the contract. Don’t forget, it is completely refundable if we let you down – which we don’t intend to!
Thank you again for those who have been very patient with the delays we’ve experienced. Like you, we are also frustrated by them but know that the end-product will be worth it. Remember if you have already secured your site at the lower rent rates, then hang in there. You are definitely better off, as rents are only going to go up with the increased building costs. I hope you agree that our 10-year terms provide a lot of comfort and security, and although it’s taking us longer to build than we hoped, the outcome will truly be worth the wait.
Information in this article is true and correct as of 3 February 2022.
