Harry Triguboff’s Meriton tops HIA-Colorbond Housing 100 builders list
Billionaire Harry Triguboff’s Meriton Group has become the country’s largest home builder, the latest HIA-Colorbond Housing 100 report shows.
It jumped from fourth place after more than tripling the number of housing starts from last year to 7,929.
"The leap to the top from last year's fourth placing reflects the growing trend towards apartment living and a nationwide apartment boom," Meriton's managing director Harry Triguboff said.
Meriton's dwellings commenced in the year 2013/2014 trumped Perth’s traditional home builder BGC, who ran second with 5,004 housing starts.
“We are very proud to become the premier home builder in Australia,” said Triguboff.
“This became possible because of the hard work and dedication of all our staff. We believe that building apartments is very important for the country, the state, the councils, subcontractors, employees and the purchasers. The main thing is – we all did well.”
Meriton has been New South Wales’ largest apartment developer for several years and last year became Australia’s number one apartment developer. Its 7,929 starts represents more than 10% of the 66,764 dwelling commencements of the entire Housing 100.
The surge in new apartment starts pushed Brookfield Multiplex (with 2,189) and LU Simon (1,179) into the top 20 builders list.
Among the share of dwellings started by the 100 largest builders, apartments, or multi-residential dwellings, rose in proportion to 24% of the total from 16% a year earlier.
The HIA-Colorbond report predicts 182,416 housing starts for the year to June, up 12.7% from the previous year.
Meriton’s status as Australia’s largest home builder is a significant achievement for a company that operates only on Australia’s east coast.
It has constructed more than 60,000 dwellings in Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast over the past 50 years.
Currently, Meriton has more than 15,000 apartments in its construction pipeline across 25 sites.
It has spent $431 million on six site acquisitions in 2014 to date, purchasing in covetable inner-city areas with plans to build both residential and serviced apartment accommodation.