By Dennise Williams, Staff ReporterNEW ERA Homes 2000 Ltd will be embarking on a new $4 billion housing development in Bernard Lodge, St. Catherine, covering 120 acres and consisting of 961 townhouse and detached units. The development, titled Caribbean Estates, will consist of seven clusters of gated communities named after Caribbean Islands. During an exclusive interview with the Financial Gleaner, the executives of New Era, chairman and part owner Leo Taddeo and vice-president Carl Tucker spoke proudly about the new community that will encompass the lessons learned from the previous communities built by them.
New Era has had much experience in the Jamaican home building market over the seven years that they have been in the country. Mr. Taddeo, chairman of New Era, a company in 50/50 partnership with the Ministry of Environment and Housing since 1997, has as one of his many policies, "We don't build boxes." This frame of mind has revolutionised the way housing schemes have been designed in St. Catherine.
Mr. Taddeo, a builder in Canada since 1986, came to Jamaica in 1995, looked around certain housing schemes and saw what he titled, "sweat shops." There was a need, in his mind, for more spacious Georgian style affordable housing. And he was right.
The first housing scheme built by New Era was Angels Estate I. According to Mr. Tucker, "The reaction was incredible. Angels I, consisting of 467 units, sold out in 5 months." Mr. Taddeo chimes in, "The market was ready for an improvement. Jamaicans wanted beautiful, affordable housing. New Era changed the standard of building homes in Jamaica. You can see how our competition copied our designs."
From Angels I in 1999, New Era went on to build Cedar Grove in 2000, Cedar Manor in 2001 and Angels Estate II in 2002. In total, New Era has built 1,146 homes.
NHT PRICE RANGE
One of the keys to New Era's success was to build homes that fell in the price range of National Housing Trust (NHT) contributors. Before that, the concept of affordable housing was to give purchasers a shell unit that they had to complete. According to Mr. Taddeo, "We delivered 2 bedrooms that were move in ready. All you had to do was bring in your furniture. We were the first to include a ceramic tiled floor, ceiling fans, full kitchen and bath, driveway and solar water heater in the units."
The schemes that New Era built also included a fully built day care centre, football field and the communities were gated. Stated Mr. Taddeo, "Those features were not in the typical housing development in Jamaica. The other developers would leave raw open spaces for the persons in the communities to build themselves. New Era actually built the facilities. We build communities."
In terms of Caribbean Estates, the new community that New Era will be building, one of the big features will be clustered communities. Mr. Taddeo noted that Cedar Manor and Cedar Grove, gated communities with no more than 140 units each, have a better appearance of community cohesion than the Angels Estates I and II with over 400 units in each scheme. States Mr. Taddeo, "People take care of their communities better when it is on a small scale. When the housing scheme is too big, you lose the sense of togetherness. So in the future we will be building in small modules. In Caribbean Estates, the modules Trinidad, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent, Martinique, St. Lucia and Dominica will not have more than 209 units each.
DETACHED UNITS
Another consumer demand that New Era is catering to is the demand for town homes and detached units. States Mr. Tucker, "We built semi-detached units in the Angels communities, but people prefer to have a unit with land around it so that they can build out. So even the townhouses that we will build will have land space in the back for expansion."
Jamaican consumers also require space. While the current batch of New Era houses is 650 square feet, in Caribbean Estates, the detached houses will be 750 square feet with 3,400 square feet of land. The townhouses will range from 960 to 1,170 square feet with between 2,210 to 3,400 square feet of land space.
And since gated communities with 24-hour security are standard fare in Jamaica, Caribbean Estates will facilitate this. Explained Mr. Taddeo, "We will put a wall around the entire front of Caribbean Estates at a cost of US$1.5 million. At the back, we will put chain link fencing." Mr. Tucker adds, "We will ask purchasers to contribute to a fund that will kick start the fees paid to a security guard for each of the seven modules."
Now in terms of costs, New Era has always kept their prices in the region where two NHT contributors could purchase with ease. However, Mr. Taddeo states, "We have to price Caribbean Estates with the prices that have taken effect since devaluation has taken place. But the difference between us and the other developers is that they work on a 100 per cent profit while we strive for 25 per cent and usually come out with 15 per cent profit on our developments." The 15 per cent return on investment is very acceptable to Mr. Taddeo as in Canada he would only earn 1 per cent on his money in a bank account.
