Ngāi Tai ki Tāmaki is widening its property game with the purchase of the most expensive school grounds the Crown has ever sold.
The 13-hectare plot of land, which houses Macleans College in Bucklands Beach in east Auckland, is valued at more than $120 million. It was an opportunity granted as part of the iwi’s deed of settlement, which was finalised in 2018.
Chief executive Tama Potaka explains that the land purchase is about responsibility to mana whenua, mana moana and manawa.
“Those drivers and over-arching vision motivate us to get out and start re-acquiring, paddock by paddock, our land,” he says.
The mahi doesn’t just stop with reacquiring land. The iwi has also been in restoration projects in the Hauraki Gulf, housing developments across Tāmaki Makaurau and investments across many areas.
“When it comes to the due diligence around these investments we’ve got two dynamics. One: a property that we might buy to hold, and hold as long as we can. In that space we try to find properties that are low risk, backed by tenants like the Crown and with good lease terms.”
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The iwi also has a hand in development property – building to sell.
“It all comes back when you look through the financial and investment means, what a good adjusted return is. Those are different for leasehold properties like Macleans [College] compared to development properties like Middlemore."
The iwi plans to reinvest the Ministry of Education’s revenue stream, to whom the land is leased to, back into its property and commercial investments like tourism and agriculture, as well as into the organisation’s environmental, social and cultural activities.
The iwi has also partnered with Hāpai, a group of iwi and Māori property investors that looks into lots of different property types.
“What we do is we like to partner with Hāpai because we’re one of those small iwi that don’t have a lot of money but have a lot of attitude, and we have access to a lot of property opportunities in Tāmaki Makaurau, which is the engine of the New Zealand economy.”
Potaka says the iwi likes to adopt a “PMA – positive Māori attitude”.
“We stay positive about the things that Māori, iwi and our organisations can do, particularly around trying to improve the wellbeing of our iwi members, tribal members and Aucklanders generally.”
That means building communities, not just houses, and high standards of housing to express manaakitanga throughout all of their housing projects for whānau, he says.
