‘Quiet Confidence’: Dalcott Pushes Deeper into SEQ Apartment Market

Dalcott has broken from the Pyco brand, brought construction in-house and consolidated a cluster of sites in South Brisbane to plant its flag firmly in the River City. Directors Ben Dalgliesh and Lachlan Cottee are having a busy year, with a $400-million pipeline on the horizon. The duo has a significant project under way—Ondé at Kirra on the Gold Coast—another South Brisbane project in planning and a further two South Brisbane sites rounding out the precinct. “I don’t think it was the original intention to just buy up half of South Brisbane,” Cottee said. “We kind of started with Browning Street and then O’Connell; there was an opportunity there and we thought, oh, we could probably make that work. “So we added that on—and then Aria came along and [there were] just so many efficiencies by tacking this on as well.” Three towers, one basement The precinct now spans Browning and O’Connell streets, and a heritage corner site dating to circa 1900, understood to be West End’s original general store. A development application for the heritage site at 106 Vulture Street is about to be lodged, with a residential building proposed behind the retained shopfront. ▲ Marrone will be the first development of the three-project precinct to go to market. The O’Connell Street site came into play after neighbouring developer Aria shifted its attention to a project on Melbourne Street, Dalgliesh said, which freed up the opportunity to bring the sites under one basement and one set of essential services. And the efficiencies aren’t just financial, he said. The proximity of landholdings will also allow Dalcott to take a co-ordinated approach to planning across the sites. This includes consolidated basement parking and a single vehicle entry and exit point designed to reduce the number of crossovers and minimise traffic movements on surrounding local streets. Marrone will be the first of the three projects to launch to market, with La Terra to follow. It’s not the first time the developer has grown a project by stealth. Its earlier projects Nouveau at Albion and Atelier at South Brisbane both began as single or double-lot acquisitions before neighbouring sites were folded in. “I think it almost derisks it a little bit,” Cottee said. “If you’re going to put so much effort into a project, [it makes sense] making it not as big as possible but as economically efficient as possible.” “We’ve done smaller sites in the past and the margin for error is so small,” Dalgliesh said. “If there’s a sewer manhole outside the site that you didn’t factor in, that kind of drains your whole contingency.” Scale, by contrast, buys room to plan a better outcome rather than being constrained by a small developable envelope. Bringing construction in-house Dalcott formally exited its Pyco brand partnership last month, buying out former partners on part of the pipeline. Earlier projects developed under the Pyco name will remain associated with that brand; new sites will move forward under Dalcott alone. The bigger structural shift, though, is on the delivery side. ▲ Dalcott directors Lachlan Cottee and Ben Dalgliesh have delivered 10 projects together, and have four more in the works across the Gold Coast and Brisbane. Dalcott signed to bring construction in-house in July last year, with the transition formally completed in November and the Rawcorp team absorbed into Dalcott. “We’re not contract builders, we’re not tendering out,” Dalgliesh said. “It’s less about purely the commercial side of it, trying to be constrained by margin. We can get the right outcomes when we control it, and we can get to site a lot quicker as well.” The developer has also paired again with Brisbane architecture firm DaHa, which also designed Nouveau at Albion. Broader market appeal On product, Dalcott is positioning deliberately away from the top of the market. “There’s a lot of people kind of going towards that ultra-high-end downsizer—full floor, half floor, plus $4 million product,” Cottee said. “We’ve got a bit of a quiet confidence in what we’re doing, where it’s not this over-the-top, [claiming to be] the best of the best. “It’s this really nice, well-planned, thought-out product that sits in a more comfortable [bracket]—it appeals to a much broader market base.” The precinct’s product mix varies by site: the O’Connell Street tower, described as smaller-format, is expected to appeal to younger families or investors, while the Browning Street product would comprise three-bedroom apartments of about 130sq m and is pitched more toward owner-occupiers and downsizers. Dalcott has appointed Realm Projects, led by managing director Shane Foley, as the exclusive sales and marketing partner for the projects after previous sold-out project collaborations. “It’s more about doing something different that you are confident there will be absorption from the market instead of just churning out and doing the same thing that everyone else kind of seems to do,” Cottee said. On broader conditions, Dalcott’s view is cautiously upbeat. “[The market] does seem to be still tracking pretty well compared to New South Wales and Victoria”, Dalgliesh said, but noted there was ongoing buyer sensitivity to monetary policy settings. “I think eventually people will get over it... there’s always that adjustment period.”

Apartments
Taryn Paris
Wed 02 Sep 26

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