Kinloch sections back on market at big discounts
RESIDENTIAL sections next to the Kinloch golf course at Lake Taupo are back on the market – with $500,000 off the original asking price.
The sections were originally priced at up to $650,000 each, but the development struck financial difficulties four years ago and they are now being offered at $120,000 to $160,000, without the restrictive building covenants mandated by the original developer.
The Kinloch project was originally in two parts, an 18-hole, Jack Nicklausdesigned golf course surrounded by a 176-lot subdivision, and an adjacent block of land which was intended to be a secondary nine-hole golf course with another 52 residential sections.
The high-profile project was being developed by Kinloch Golf Resort Ltd, a company owned by a consortium of New Zealand and overseas-based private investors with much of the funding for the first stage of the project – the main golf course and 176 lot subdivision – provided by Hanover Finance.
The sections were slow to sell and in 2008 Hanover took possession of the project as mortgagee and sold the main golf course.
According to the liquidator’s report, Kinloch Golf Resort had debts of nearly $50 million by the time the company was wound up this year, mostly owed to Bridgecorp and private finance company FE Investments.
However the smaller golf course and its associated sections had separate funding arrangements and these have now been taken over by FE Kinloch, a company owned by Auckland developer Martin Kells who was behind The Docks apartment development in Auckland.
These sections have now come back on the market and are being sold through Bayleys Taupo for about a quar- ter of their original asking prices.
However, the nine-hole golf course they were supposed to be built around was never completed and has been leased to a local farmer for grazing stock.
According to Bayleys, this block may be developed into larger 2ha sections at some stage. The subdivision has been renamed The Poplars and its sections are sized from 1771 square metres to 2692sqm.