40-48 Church Street, Timaru

These two very high profile blocks of flats in Timaru came on the market for sale without much interest due to the run-down condition of both of them. Each of them was considered an earthquake-prone building and had been stickered as such by the council. To make things worse, no repairs or maintenance of any kind had been carried out on the properties for over 20 years!

Locals suggested that the value in the properties would be in the underlying commercially zoned land, however, we saw value in the repair, strengthening and renovation of the buildings.

An offer was presented and accepted with due diligence giving us time to have our engineer assess the buildings. One of the buildings was fine sitting at 70% NBS and the other needed minor work to get it above 67%. Renovation and repair work is now complete on the first block of four which involved adding an additional bedroom to each of the units, resulting in 3 units with 3 bedrooms and 1 unit with 2 bedrooms. With most of the units already tenanted and the others with plenty of interest, this is proving to be a great property to hold long term.