Short-term housing and worker accommodation business on sale

The land, buildings and business operating as one of the busiest short-term housing and seasonal worker accommodation locations in the Waikato region have been placed on the market for sale.

The Glenview Holiday Park at 22 Sloss Road in Tokoroa was originally established in the 1960s as a traditional ‘Kiwi’ holiday park for under-canvas campers and caravan-towing holiday makers.

However, changes in societal habits over ensuing decades, along with a shortage of emergency housing in the South Waikato area, have seen the business morph into its current role as provider of short-term and seasonal worker accommodation.

The Glenview Holiday Park property occupies some 17,780 square metres of freehold land on the fringe of Tokoroa’s central business district. Commercial building infrastructure at the park includes:
• Eight stand-alone residential dwellings ranging in configurations from one-bedroom units up to six-bedroom homes. These are predominantly let to various Government agencies.
• A lodge style premises consisting of two wings – each with four bedrooms and their own full living amenities. Rooms have a rack rate of $250 per week for casual tenants or $30 a night for backpackers, with Government agencies also utilising much of the room availability.
• A four-bedroom owner/manager’s residence attached to the camp’s office.
• 60 powered sites for use by caravans and motorhomes – many occupied by permanent caravan occupants at an advertised rate of $120 a week
• 20 non-powered, grassed, tent sites which rent for $20 a night
• A communal commercial-grade kitchen
• A TV lounge and games room
• A concrete ablution block with showers and toilets
and
• A laundry block with commercial-standard coin-operated washers and dryers.
Now the Glenview Holiday Park land, buildings, and going concern accommodation business have been placed on the market for sale at auction on December 5 through Bayleys Hamilton. Salespeople Josh Smith and Daniel Keane said Glenview Holiday Park was the biggest accommodation provider of its type in the South Waikato district.
“The Glenview Holiday Park’s accommodation business is sustained by a broad range of ‘guests’ – ranging from referrals from Government agencies, through to short-term contract workers in the forestry sector,” Mr Smith said.

“Those forestry contractors include seedling planters and personnel involved in the logging and harvesting processes. Many of them come in from overseas specifically for short-term contracts. As both activities have different seasons, their work scheduling makes for a consistent workforce stream staying at Glenview throughout the calendar year.

“The variety of accommodation stock on offer at Glenview – from conventional style homes through to lodge and dormitory style units - means that multiple demographic groups can be housed simultaneously.

“That freedom to ‘juggle’ the appropriate accommodation offering to the appropriate clientele has seen the Glenview maintain an annual occupancy rate of approximately 92 percent.
“Meanwhile, the proximity of the Glenview campground to Tokoroa’s various shop and supermarket amenities means there is no need for the holiday park to run a grocery or take-away outlet - which many similar such operations around the country do. Instead, Glenview’s owner/managers have concentrated totally on the core business activity of providing accommodation services.”

As a market segment, tourists and holiday-makers now comprise less than five percent of Glenview’s clientele. The business operates it’s a shuttle bus for ferrying guests to workplace locations, and for transporting children staying at the venue to and from school.

A graveled, looping, internal roading network at Glenview links the caravan and tent sites with the campground’s amenity blocks. Mr Keane said a considerable amount of land within the flat contoured park was currently underutilised – offering any new owner the potential to increase the number of either portacabins, relocatable dwellings, or caravans available to lease.

“There is demand from existing clientele market sectors for more facilities to house both Government agency referrals and the region’s seasonal workforce – particularly in light of both the Government’s ‘billion trees’ policy, and the dairying sector looking to add more forestry to its fringe land-usage,” Mr Keane said.

“In parallel, Tokoroa’s central location just a short drive from both Rotorua and Taupo means the town is a hub emergency accommodation overflows from both centres,” he said.

“The property’s current owners have developed the Glenview’s present operating model to deliver a strong cash-flow. The opportunity is there now for any new owner to ramp up the portfolio of accommodating services to a greater degree through intensification of land-use intensification.

“This could be implemented either in a phased basis, or over a short time-frame.”

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