We’ve just paid $130,000 in development contributions for 4 new houses on Normandy Ave in Hamilton City. We used to pay about $11,000 for infill housing per house.
Oh, and the $130,000 in council fees does not include the fees for:
– resource consent
– subdivision consent
– building consent
– engineering consent
– council connections for sewer, water and stormwater
– council inspections fees
or the cost of actually paying for and installing stormwater detention tanks, because we are no allowed to connect to council stormwater lines as they don’t want to upgrade them.
And there are many more fees and development contributions to be paid to other monopolies like WEL (power) UFF (Internet) and First Gas (Gas) who can set the fees at whatever they like as you have no choice but to use them.
If the council and government really wanted affordable housing they would stop putting up the fees and increasing the regulations. We spent close to $200,000 on this site for retaining and foundations alone. A ridiculous amount, and mostly due to new ‘potential liquefaction’ rules.
Another example of costs increasing is the sale of UFF (Ultra Fast Fibre) by WEL Energy to a Japanese investment fund. UFF is the only provider of fibre broadband in Hamilton and Hamilton City Council require developers to prove they have a UFF connection before they can get new titles.
What this means is that a foreign owned organisation now controls part of the new land title process in Hamilton and because they are a monopoly they can charge whatever they want in development contributions. This means land can’t be subdivided without paying money offshore.
The same Japanese company also own First Gas, so you pay them for gas connections too.
So let’s keep talking about how wonderful it would be to have lots of affordable housing, and do absolutely nothing about making it happen.
John Kenel
CEO
Assured Property
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