Part-time labourer to property developer - how did that happen?

Over the last 11 years Ockham Residential property developments have been popping up all over Auckland – Mt Eden, Grey Lynn, Hobsonville, Avondale, Mt Albert and now Waterview. But the company, founded by Mark Todd along with his best mate Benjamin Preston, does far more than build apartments.

Mark, was property development always the dream?

No, definitely not. I got into it by accident. I never had a strong drive to be anything in particular when I was growing up. I went to university to do a science degree in pure maths and I also finished off a second major in philosophy. I’m really an academic at heart.

I was nearly a meteorologist. I got a job straight out of university but I never turned up. I’d spent the summer speed sailing in Glenorchy and by the time I was supposed to be starting the job I decided I didn’t want to partake in the working world at that time. That was a turning point in my life. Instead I spent a lot of time sailing and surfing in my early to mid-twenties and labouring to support my bumming around.

Part-time labourer to property developer is a big leap. How did that happen?

I painted houses to earn money and when my brother Carl, who was a boat builder, came back after living in London, we started doing painting and renovations together. We did small extensions for a few years but by the time I got to about 28 I realised there was no future in it.

So I got in touch with four banks, Dad loaned us $60,000 and we bought our first property in Mt Wellington, our home patch. We shifted a house, did it up, sold it and put a couple of new homes on the back.

When we worked it out, we made $17 an hour over 18 months with our first development and we worked 32 days straight at the end to finish it. We did everything – landscaping, painting, carpentry, block-laying.

But we learned heaps and it was great working to our own timetables. Most of the time, we could drop tools and go surfing whenever we wanted.

We did that for 10 years and by the time the GFC hit in 2008 Carl and I had probably built around 60 or 70 standard infill townhouses, plus our first small apartment block of six units. Then everything changed. It didn’t matter who you were, the taps turned off. We didn’t get into any trouble, we just had no business because there was no funding available for anybody.

So why did you choose to start a company building apartments in the middle of a financial crisis?

I did it with my best mate Ben. I first met him at kindergarten and we went to the same primary school, but we didn’t become best friends until we did the same degree at university. He got into banking and by 2008 was living in Houston, trading gas and electricity for a bank and running quite a big team. Like a lot of bankers of that era, he had a lot of money pulled out of the equity market earning zero interest in a bank account so we decided to use some of it to set up Ockham. We built our first apartment building, Ockham Apartments, opposite Eden Park.

He was the financial partner, and by then I had learned a lot about town planning and getting things consented, designed and built. It was a bit of a leap of faith but it went pretty well.

Was there a back-up plan in case it didn’t go well?

We had the luxury of being well-funded so we didn’t need to worry about selling the apartments first. Things have changed a bit in the last five years – you have to get 100 percent pre-sales to cover debt before you start. But to start with, our back-up plan if the sh*t hit the fan was to finish the building and lease it out. Ben said, “Don’t worry if we can’t sell them, we’ll just own the building”. It was better than having the money earning nothing in the bank.

You describe yourselves as urban regenerators, rather than property developers. What do you want to achieve?

It is important to us to do something for the city. Auckland’s landscape is world class but the apartment sector was decidedly average before 2008. We went into this with an ambition to build things better, to set a new standard and to be copied.

We’ve done some affordable housing to show we can make changes there, and we are now inclined to build on transport routes to encourage people to use public transport. A couple of our developments don’t have car parking but are close to train stations and bus routes.

So it’s not all about making money?

All businesses have to make money or you won’t last but I have come to realise that making money is the lowest possible bar in business. You should be looking at what else you should be doing – leading by example, doing things better, looking after your employees and, if you are a property developer, making sure you are leaving a positive legacy in the communities you are working in.

You set up the Ockham Collective (formerly the Ockham Foundation) to “support educational initiatives that encourage critical and independent thinking and foster a sense of social justice among students of all ages”. How important is that?

Very. It’s about giving back. We do a few things, like sponsoring the First Foundation (which provides scholarships to university students) and supporting Nga Rangatahi Toa, a programme that helps youth who have been excluded from school to get back into education or into the workforce.

We have also partnered with Objectspace, a gallery that provides space for exhibitions and discourse around architecture, creativity and the visual arts.

Plus there are the Ockham Book Awards (previously the New Zealand Post Book Awards) which you’ve been sponsoring for five years.

We were so lucky to take over the book awards, which had just lost their sponsor. We take huge delight in being able to sponsor them and we’ll be doing it as long as I am in business.

Are you an avid reader?

I used to be but it gets hard when you are building up a business and also when you have kids. I usually pick up a book and fall asleep. But I have been reading a lot more in the last year.

Kindle or real books?

It has to be actual books.

Fiction or non-fiction?

I mostly read fiction, the last book I read was The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster, which was really good. I like fiction because it gets you out of your own world and I think that’s healthy.

Do you feel a sense of pride when you drive past the developments Ockham has built?

I don’t know if it’s pride – a sense of connection, maybe. I don’t have any feeling of ownership but it is satisfying to know you have built them. For me the most emotional time is when the scaffolding comes down and you see the building for the first time. That has brought tears to my eyes a few times.