New Zealand is a very young country by world standards, and like most adolescents is conflicted.

Developers are convinced New Zealand needs to intensify development within  existing cities to get the national economy moving but passionate heritage and community groups are often anti-intensificaiton and vocal about their desire to keep suburbs unaffected.

Horror stories of promising property developments falling over have been hitting news headlines, along with gloomy figures that show construction of new homes and sales of existing homes have dropped. Meanwhile, the population is at 4.3 million and rising.

While National’s promised changes to the Resource Management Act (RMA) should improve consent processes and costs, delays have been driving developers up the wall and holding up subdivisions in recent years.

Despite the property slump, McConnell Property is launching construction on a 10-year commercial development worth over $100 million in Hamilton that will bring skilled labour jobs to the Waikato.

The Waipa District Council has granted final approval for the 65ha business complex Titanium Park to go ahead, with construction slated to begin in June.

The $140 million McLennan development at Papakura including 145 state homes has been called to a halt due to a lack of funding.

McConnell Property took over the 24-ha site from Housing New Zealand with the promise of dedicating one third of the homes to state housing.

The developers have a funding partnership with Dutch ABN Amro, backed by the Royal Bank of Scotland, but McLennan requires presale private investors and not one section has sold.