Apartment building costs are on the rise: Meriton boss Harry Triguboff's warning

Harry Triguboff has noted that soaring building material prices posed a risk to other construction companies. His comments come against the backdrop of Queensland’s Privium Group, the ABD Group in Melbourne and the Hobart home builder Inside Out Construction. However Mr Triguboff declined to make a prediction on whether more builders would hit the wall, when he spoke yesterday at The Australian Financial Review Property Summit. “The building costs are going up a lot,” he noted, adding "subcontractors cannot guarantee the price.” He noted the soaring building costs were making it hard for developers to price apartment projects being sold now for completion in two years time. Mr Triguboff's company Meriton builds its own projects. “It’s not a matter of the labour force asking for a 5 per cent increase or 3 per cent increase. Iron ore prices have come down, but the steel has gone up. And it’s going up by a lot, not by 2 per cent – [but by] 10-20 per cent. It’s going up a great deal.” The debt free Meriton ended the financial year with about $3.17bn worth of investment properties on its balance sheet plus $207m worth of vendor finance loans it has supplied to buyers of its apartments. Dexus CEO Darren Steinberg and Lendlease CEO Tony Lombardo also raised concerns about rising costs of steel and timber at the summit. A resumption of immigration and end to lockdowns was crucial, the property executives told the summit.