“Dear Anthony Roberts,
[…] You need the money and we need the money too. Harry.” Letter obtained by Save Little Bay under freedom of information.The ‘impossible’ Harry Triguboff turns 90
Australia’s most prolific apartment developer and owner is preparing Meriton for life without him.
Robert HarleyContributorAustralia’s most prolific apartment developer and owner, Meriton’s Harry Triguboff, will throw a party for more than 400 guests in the Sydney Town Hall this Saturday to celebrate turning 90.
Today Triguboff has more focus on running the business, and on Meriton’s extensive investment portfolio, and slightly less focus on individual projects.
“The main thing now is to see how it will be after me,” he says. “That’s my main problem. I always have to have one eye on that.”
“Now I am impossible”: Harry Triguboff at 90. Janie Barrett
But when we talked last week – about the big challenges facing housing and the lessons of the past 60 years – his enthusiasm seemed undimmed.
By 10.30 each morning he is in the office. Four days a week he visits a site; each weekend he studies the summaries of the business – called sheets at Meriton – and each Saturday afternoon he speaks to the salesmen.
“Its no good talking to the manager, you have to talk to the salesmen. To every salesman, then you can talk to the manager,” he says.
“I ask them how many deposits they have taken … If they did not take anything, and not for a couple of weeks, then I have to help them. I drop the price or do something else.”
The laser-like focus on sales is a habit of a lifetime and one of many which has helped Meriton become the biggest apartment business in the country.
Triguboff was raised in China, educated at the Scots College in Sydney and at Leeds University; worked in textiles in South Africa and Israel, then taxis and milk runs in Sydney before starting in 1963 with a block of eight units in the Sydney suburb of Tempe.
The government cannot allow prices to go down a lot. And the banks can’t allow prices to go down a lot. They were always my two partners.
— Harry Triguboff
Since then Triguboff has built more than 76,000 apartments in Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Canberra and Melbourne, and particularly in Sydney, where Meriton accounts for about 10 per cent of all new apartments across the city.
At the same time, Triguboff has created a fully integrated developer, builder, owner and manager. Meriton owns over 4000 apartments – the biggest build-to-rent portfolio in the country – it manages another 4000 for investors, and is the largest owner-operator of hotel suites in the country with a portfolio of more than 5000 rooms in 19 locations.
Such longevity in this industry is rare. When Triguboff started, the big names were companies like Parkes Developments, Home Units of Australia, Mainline, and Lanray. None survived the boom and bust of the 1970s.
“These other people, they built often thinking prices would go up forever,” he says.
“And that is not the way it works. Prices do go up but not in a straight line. Sometimes they go up; sometimes they go down.”
Today Triguboff estimates Meriton’s value at $23.9 billion and rising, compared with last year’s AFR Rich List estimate of Triguboff’s wealth at $21.2 billion. Whatever the figure, it is well ahead of fellow property survivor, Lendlease, now capitalised at $5 billion or Stockland at $9 billion.
The formula is pretty simple: You build what people want, what they can afford, and what makes you a profit. It’s the execution that is hard.
Sometimes they go down: Harry Triguboff on unit prices. Janie Barrett
“I like apartments because they are very good for leasing. And they are good for selling. A cottage is not good for leasing,” he says.
“The government cannot allow prices to go down a lot. They can’t. And the banks can’t allow prices to go down a lot because that is their mortgages. They were always my two partners.”
Meriton has ridden the densification of the cities, and – ironically in light of Triguboff’s constant battles over planning – the long-term lack of supply.
Last week Meriton gained approval for another three towers at Macquarie Park but in general Triguboff’s attitude has hardened. He is not buying sites in Sydney and if he cannot gain an approval that delivers the requisite profit – today that means garages – he’ll wait.
“You have so many blocks of land here, all approved, but nobody builds, they can’t. Every year builders are going down … The reason is you can’t buy land on which to build and make a profit,” Triguboff says.
“They (state and local governments) refuse to understand what it costs to build or how much I can get for it … They don’t know; they don’t want to know. You can’t make rules if you don’t know the facts, and they refuse to do it.”
It also impacts his rivals.
“Imagine my competition; the poor buggers are already on their way to get broke. Are you telling me they will give you a good product?” he says.
To get the right workers you must go on the site, and then you see how they work.
— Triguboff’s advice for aspiring developers
“Land prices have come down. I am waiting for the authorities to behave. When they behave, I’ll buy.”
In the meantime, the situation for renters is “very bad” with rents rising and some tenants faced with the prospect of “nowhere to live”.
“Rents are going up because nobody is building,” Triguboff says. “And to make matters worse we told people to come and work here.”
In the Meriton portfolio, rents regained pre-COVID levels late last year, and have since risen another 5-6 per cent.
Sale prices will follow.
“That is obvious; they go up because rents go up,” says Triguboff. “Prices have not gone up much, but they will. It’s a one-way track, don’t worry about it.”
Sale prices follow rents up, Triguboff says. Janie Barrett
After 60 years, Triguboff does have some suggestions for aspiring developers.
Start small, live modestly, invest in the business, speed “like a meteor”, don’t take a partner because you already have one in your financier, and find the right workers.
“To get the right workers you must go on the site, and then you see how they work,” he says. “If they are bad workers they will sink you.”
Triguboff’s daughters Orna and Sharon will inherit Meriton. Two of his grandsons already work in the Meriton “family”, helped along by a cadre of committed subcontractors and a core of long-serving executives, though one, David Cremona – a 26-year Meriton veteran, nine of them as national director of construction – has just moved on.
Triguboff knows that while the business is in good shape, he will not always be around to make the decisions.
“The staff is good … but I am now more strict with the people I employ.”
Stricter than in the past? Really? “Now I am impossible,” he says.
Robert Harley is a former AFR property editor. He can be contacted at rob@rharley.com.au.
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