Last Auckland housing shortage property developer dies

One of Auckland’s most influential property developers has died aged 90.

Bill (Wilfred Allen) Subritzky was in recent times better known as a Christian evangelist and healer via his Dove Ministries, which distributes pamphlets, books and videos of his teaching and his evangelistic healing meetings.

However, first as a lawyer and later property developer, Mr Subritzy had a major influence on Auckland during the last major housing shortage in the 1950s and 1960s.

His company, Universal Homes, mass-produced houses in standard designs. It sold 14,000 houses over 30 years.

Auckland grew enormously during the 1960s and 1970s with the opening up of large urban subdivisions across the isthmus. Universal Homes expanded to become New Zealand’s second largest home builder.

Mr Subritzky later sold the company to Chase Corporation and these days it is owned by Singaporean interests, with north Auckland developments.

In 1971 he became involved in the Charismatic movement, and became an independent evangelist and healer.

In 1986, Subritzky and other conservative Christians helped establish the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, a right-wing Christian pressure group formed to oppose the socially-liberal policies of the fourth Labour Government.

Mr Subritzky wrote his autobiography On the Cutting Edge: The Bill Subritzky Story in 1993.  In total he wrote 14 books.

He was married to Lucy Patricia (Pat) for more than 60 years. She died in 2011. Mr Subritzky later married Kaylene. He is survived by four children, 16 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Mr Subritzky and his first wife developed an 8.9ha estate 59 years ago in one of the last Manukau Harbour-viewing estates in Lynfield, Mt Roskill, central Auckland, from a gorse and scrub covered site. The property, known as Tropicana, had an estimated market value of $16.2 million when it was put up for sale after Mrs Subritsky died.

The property featured several homes, a pool, tennis court, sheds and a separate office wing from which Mr Subritzky ran his businesses. The home was architecturally designed in the 1960s by McLachlan & Stemson and landscaped by prominent landscape architect Odo Strewe. Sheep were farmed over a third of the property and bush covered another 2ha.

The property, then valued at $15 million, was snapped up by Ryman Healthcare, which has a $120 million retirement village project for the site under way, despite the immediate proximity of a large retirement village (Hillsborough Heights, recently bought by Metlifecare and three minutes’ driving distance away) and a large and expanding BUPA resthome/hospital facility seven minutes away as well as a number of other resthomes and villages a slightly longer distance away.

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