Despite a Wanaka residential construction company signalling it might have to restructure and shed jobs because of the Covid-19 crisis, one South Island company says it is finding it hard to keep up with the demand for housing.
On Monday, Fortis Holdings Ltd (trading under the brands CDL Building and Turnkey Homes) managing director Justin Carnie said "Covid-19 has had a significant impact on the building industry in the southern lakes district".
"While the company has remained busy completing existing projects since the onset of Covid, there is no doubt that we are now seeing delays and uncertainty in relation to securing new project work at the levels seen pre-Covid."
Fowler Homes director Ivan Stanicich said he was surprised by the Fortis Holdings proposal.
"From what we are seeing ourselves and from what I am hearing anecdotally from competition and colleagues, the activity level is fine.
"I think most of us have planned for this big reduction but it just doesn’t seem to have happened."
Mr Stanicich said both the Fowler Homes Queenstown and Wanaka offices had had more inquiries since the Covid-19 crisis than before.
"It is actually out-of-towners, people realising now is an opportunity to get on to this property wagon when interest rates are low, when prices won’t rise like they did before and when there is not that level of demand."
Wanaka architect Anne Salmond said since the onset of Covid-19 she had noticed an increase in the demand for alterations and additions.
However, some of the clients who had put their projects on hold at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis had "come back", she said.
In talking to construction firms both in Wanaka and Queenstown, Master Builders Central Otago president Allister Saville had found some companies had experienced jobs being cancelled, some had no work after Christmas and some had changed focus, including his own.
"We don’t normally get alterations — we are predominantly new builds, but we currently have two or three homes in front of us plus two alterations."
Mr Saville had also cut
his overheads.
"If building firms want to survive they have to have already looked at their overhead costs such as hours and margins so they can be more efficient."
Queenstown Lakes District Council spokesman Jack Barlow said 86 building consent applications were withdrawn over the period March 26 to August 26, but 56 of those were related to the Northlake Kiwibuild development.
By comparison, 47 building consent applications were withdrawn over the same period last year, he said.
