Rescuing a Luxury Development:
Overcoming Challenges in Manly’s Golden Mile

In a Nutshell….

A small site developer from Sydney faced significant setbacks while undertaking a high-end residential development in Brisbane’s bayside suburb of Manly. With the project behind schedule and financial pressures mounting, our team stepped in to oversee the finishing trades, mediate neighbourhood disputes, and facilitate agent selection. By leveraging our local knowledge and industry expertise, we navigated a complex situation, ultimately securing record-breaking sales for the developer.

The Challenge

A small, luxury domestic house developer secured a parcel of land on the golden mile terraces in Brisbane’s bayside suburb of Manly, utilising a project manager not originally from Brisbane. It was a highly ambitious project, 2 identical executive residences of 4 stories each, inground pools, 8 car garages and sweeping bayside views.

For personal reasons, there was a blowout on the project in terms of time and manpower, with the original builder going bankrupt and then a number of trades refusing to complete the job. With COVID in full swing and the owner and investor bleeding money, and no natural local network, they reached out to our director to oversee the finishing trades, neighbourhood legal disputes, and selection of agents.

The Strategy

Several of the local agents refused to discuss or represent the properties, due in large part to interactions they had encountered with the developer’s onsite project manager over the preceding two years, and representations that he was in fact the owner/developer.

Utilising a project management schedule from previous owner sales roles of our director, we tapped our local networks and explained that the situation was not as it seemed, encouraging several of the local agents to re-engage.

Having made a recommendation, the owner gave us permission to represent throughout the staging of the homes, marketing, and finally negotiations and handovers.

The Outcome

This project management as an owner’s representative and the associated sales management service model, whilst not strictly a real estate agent’s realm, requires the same nuanced approach to people and assets, timeframes and legal outcomes involved in any build or property sales campaign. It is a testament to the flexibility and broad experience our team has; we are not only real estate or buyer’s agents, we have extensive large-scale business knowledge.

Utilising our extensive background in people, sales, and our knowledge of both the local real estate market, people, and regulations, allowed us to achieve a wonderful outcome for our client, who, stuck interstate due to COVID and with piling bills from two unfinished and untenanted $2m each properties, was facing bankruptcy. The properties set a street record, marketed by one of the best local agents in the area.