Millbrook celebrates as show home up for award

Millbrook celebrates as show home comes up for top honours at premier property awards

Queenstown’s five-star Millbrook Resort is on a roll with steady property sales and an award-winning show home.

In the past six months the resort has realized $98m in new sales and re-sales of homes and sections. One of the sales was of the latest neighbourhood release - the Coronet Square show home.

And this week, Millbrook is celebrating news that the show home has won a regional Master Builders House of the Year award.

The Coronet Square show home, built by Arrowtown-based company AJ Saville Builder Limited, was awarded a gold rating in the Southern Region division of the Master Builders James Hardie Show Home Award, and was also named the overall category winner.

The win takes Saville to the national awards gala dinner to be held in Auckland in November, a familiar environment for the multi-award-winning builder.

Mr Saville’s company won the 2006 national competition with another Millbrook house in the ‘new homes over $1 million’ category, and also won the Pink Batts Ultra Energy Efficiency Award. He has previously been a regional finalist nine times and a national finalist four times.

Millbrook Property and Development Manager Ben O’Malley said they had been working with Allister for the past nine years and was delighted to have a builder of his standing working at the resort.

“This is a win/win success story because his reputation is growing along with ours,” he said.

“We’ve had a very long association with him and he keeps consistently performing at the very highest standard. We all know that every builder is only as good as their last job.

“It’s an important factor when people are buying a home like the ones in Coronet Square that they know AJ Saville produces the quality of building, finishes and fittings you expect in a house of this standard.
“Allister’s work rates among the best in the country. He consistently works within Millbrook’s guidelines to ensure consistency in standards to create the timeless and striking buildings Millbrook is renowned for.”

Christchurch firm Ingrid Geldof Design which designed all of the kitchens, bathrooms and laundries in the Coronet Square homes also picked up an award for their work at Coronet Square. Rachel Barnes of IGD’s Queenstown office won a ‘Regional Award’ for the master ensuite at the National Kitchen and Bathroom Associations awards ceremony held in Queenstown on Saturday night.

The Coronet Square show home will remain open for viewings until the end of July when the new owners receive the keys. A new Coronet Square show home, furnished once more by Queenstown-based interior designer Jean Foster, will open its doors in September.

“The show home has been a huge success; we have had more than 2,000 people come through it since Christmas,” said Mr O’Malley.

“The market is being more selective; they want to see the product, touch it and feel it,” he said.

“Buyers are definitely being more discerning. It’s getting harder to “sell the dream” from plans only, as many developers and vendors have discovered in recent months, but the fact that the show home and others have sold at Millbrook shows that quality is still winning out.”

Mr O’Malley said the show home had sold to an Australian buyer for a confidential figure.

ENDS