In Conversation: Behind the Scenes at the Dennis Family Corporation

The Urban Developer welcomes Bert Dennis OAM, founding chairman of Dennis Family Corporation, along with executive chairman Grant Dennis, to our webinar series.

During the past sixty years, the Dennis Family corporation has evolved into one of Australia’s largest private landowners, controlling development and home building arms that make up the bulk of a business whose annual revenue puts it within reach of some of Australia’s top-listed ASX200 companies.

Family patriarch Bert’s astute vision and drive have led the company in developing thousands of hectares of land into residential communities and building tens of thousands of homes.

Today, as a 100 per cent family-owned business, the Dennis Family continues to operate across three sectors of the property industry—residential land development, housing construction and commercial development.

Bert holds the position of founding chairman and has been joined in the business by his four children and grandchildren, with his second child Grant heading up the company as executive chairman.

Bert received a medal of the Order of Australia in 2005 for services to the housing industry, supporting charities and contributing to urban planning debate.

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The conversation will explore:

• ^{Bert’s career journey from renovating old houses, gaining council work as an engineer to owning his own consultancy, completing his first 20-lot residential development, to managing residential communities and building around 1,200 houses a year}

• ^{The Dennises’ 10-year journey to transform a sprawling property, construction and farming company into an extremely well-organised multi-generational family business, and Bert’s staunch prioritisation of family, health and sport over business}

• ^{Whether being a privately-owned business rather than a listed company has impacted on Dennis Family Company’s outlook on the residential property sector in the Victorian and south-east Queensland markets, and the impact that Covid-19 will have on their appetite for new projects}

• ^{Lessons that previous cycles have taught them and how developers can respond in the current environment, and the success of the family's countercyclical approach: "When the market's really bad that's when we buy big and we buy long," (Grant).}

• ^{How growing up in poverty has influenced Bert’s work supporting charities (the corporation has built more than 10 homes for various charities and grants a proportion of the sales from each lot on its estates to community groups each year)}

• ^{What will be the Dennis family's legacy in the Australian urban environment?}

Bert and Grant Dennis will join The Urban Developer chief executive Adam Di Marco for this discussion on Zoom.

Attendees will be able to submit questions prior to and during the discussion which will be moderated by Adam.

Click here to register.