Nearly fifty local Intrapac house and land buyers on the Northern Rivers may need to take Supreme Court action to avoid being short-changed and priced out of the region.
Intrapac has taken advantage of a legal loophole allowing it cancel 47 contracts for stage 10 and 11 Banyan Hill estate lots and potentially re-sell the land in smaller lots for hundreds of thousands of dollars more per lot.
The company on Thursday told The Echo it understood ‘how disappointing the cancellation’ was for impacted buyers and hadn’t taken the decision ‘lightly’.
‘We are responsible for ensuring our projects are financially viable and that we do not jeopardise the delivery of the remaining 500 lots of this project,’ a spokesperson emailed, citing an arduous development application process and increased costs.
‘Nearly three years since the process kicked off, and some 18 months since the formal DA submission (the statutory period is 40 days), we are still not sure when the DA will be approved and what conditions might apply to the approval,’ the email read.
Intrapac said the impact of natural disasters, material and labour shortages, and state legislation changes had increased the cost of development by around 50%.
‘In future, we will only be selling lots once the DA is in hand and we have a clearer line of sight to completion timeframes,’ the email concluded.
Developer denies wanting to increase number of lots in Banyan Hill
The Ballina Shire Council didn’t officially receive a DA for stages 10 and 11 of the Banyan Hill estate until April 2022 despite Intrapac having sold lots off-plan in 2020.
The developer took millions of dollars in house and land deposits from mostly local, young families desperate to stay in the region where they work, study and have community support.
But a so-called ‘sunset clause’ in Intrapac sales contracts with Banyan Hill customers showed it could terminate agreements if the project’s DA wasn’t approved within 18 months of exchange.
A letter from Intrapac to customers said the company made ‘best efforts’ to have the DA progress but Greens Ballina Shire Councillor Kiri Dicker said it included significant changes in the proposed design, not least of all an extra 20 lots compared to the original scope for 70.
Intrapac denied the allegation.
‘We have not withdrawn the DA, and there has never been any intent to amend the as-yet unapproved DA to create more lots,’ Intrapac said, ‘any suggestion otherwise is false’.
Intrapac said it ran ‘a lengthy pre-lodgement process with the council, beginning in October 2020, to resolve as many issues as possible upfront to increase the speed of the formal DA approval’.
‘The pre-approval process took place during the backend of the COVID lockdown period, which saw slower responses with many key people and experts working remotely,’ Intrapac said.
‘The DA was initially formally lodged in August 2021, then, due to administrative issues with the council, re-lodged in February and then again in March 2022 after further council feedback.
‘It was officially accepted in April 2022, which shows on the planning portal, but that is a long time after the DA was lodged.
‘This specific DA remains lodged and remains pending.’
Complexity of estate DAs overlooked, say councillors
‘It’s a complicated DA, it’s a complicated site,’ Cr Dicker said, ‘there’s lots of constraints to it but it is approved for housing so eventually it will be approved’.
Cr Dicker said the project included ecological considerations with the land situated next to endangered ecological communities.
‘It’s on a steep gradient and so there are geotechnical considerations about the amount of cut and fill that is saved, there are stormwater considerations,’ Cr Dicker said.
‘These are not small bureaucratic hurdles that Council is putting in the way of the developer,’ she said, ‘these are absolutely reasonable expectations that we need to have’.
The first nine stages of Banyan Hill were already approved and under development, with most finished years ago.
‘This is a very big developer that has multiple developments in the Ballina Shire,’ Cr Dicker said, ‘it is not their first rodeo, and this is their core business’.
Cr Dicker said she wasn’t aware of Intrapac facing the prospect of financial collapse like some other building companies since the pandemic.
The Greens councillor echoed recent complaints from conservative Mayor Sharon Cadwallader about state expectations for councils to assess complex applications for large estates as quickly as more simple applications for backyard pools and carports.
‘I really do resent that unfair criticism of Council, because I know that our planning team is working extremely hard to facilitate the supply of housing amongst huge constraints,’ Cr Dicker said.
‘There is a nationwide shortage of planners, there was a huge increase in demand during COVID,’ Cr Dicker continued, ‘it’s very difficult to recruit planners at the moment, I think that our planning team are doing their best in relation to this issue’.
Premier promises support for higher density development
The new Labor government has so far shown little empathy for local governments under-resourced in terms of planning divisions, recently refusing to review the law allowing developers to take councils to court in expensive ratepayer funded cases when a statutory 40-day DA assessment deadline isn’t met.
NSW Premier Chris Minns on Wednesday told developers at an industry luncheon he was prepared to exploit state powers over councils if they failed to meet new housing targets introduced this year, despite the targets being widely considered unrealistic and having never been achieved before.
The Sydney Morning Herald described Mr Minns saying the new Labor government wanted to support builders of ‘innovative’ housing projects.
The premier referred to a divide between so-called ‘NIMBYs’ (‘not in my backyard’) and people supportive of higher density projects to help address housing needs.
Two million NSW voters renting rooves over their heads were ‘up for grabs’, the premier reportedly said.
Winners of the declared housing crisis
Back in the Ballina Shire, Cr Dicker said she’d like to see Intrapac offer impacted families a chance to either maintain their contracts or ‘some sort of guarantee that they’ll be able to buy in at a reasonable price’.
Developers like Intrapac were benefiting significantly from a declared housing crisis, Cr Dicker said.
‘In fact, sometimes I wonder whether they’re the only people that are benefiting,’ Cr Dicker said after she and fellow Greens member, Ballina MP Tamara Smith, met with anxious Banyan Hill buyers on Tuesday.
Cr Dicker said while Intrapac was legally allowed to take advantage of its sunset clauses, it had a moral obligation to offer buyers another extension so their dreams of owning a family home on the Northern Rivers weren’t destroyed.
The Greens councillor said most buyers were local families having to rent while they wait for their new homes to be built.
‘My understanding is they do have the option to challenge inside the Supreme Court,’ Cr Dicker said, ‘they’re considering a possible class action’.
