Pro Experts

Time to take stock of employment law compliance

Welcome to 2020 In the rush of business, it is easy to take our eye off the ball when it comes to employment law compliance. The beginning of the New Year is a good time for many businesses to take stock and review changes to employment law and how they may impact on your business. Here is a brief overview...

The Value of Building your own Castle

Anecdotally, despite rising construction and land costs, the existing high house prices have made building a house more attractive relative to buying an existing one. This is not surprising given the amount of subdivisions that have become available such as Frimley, Northwood in Hastings, Arataki in Havelock North and Parklands, Guppy Road and Te Awa in Napier being the bigger...

Are you ready for your business to grow?

The goal of most businesses is to grow. Growth is exciting. Growth implies success. More sales, more customers, more staff, more profit. But the reality can be very different. We’ll explore some of the common issues SMEs face during a growth stage; and offer some practical advice for how to work through them. Issues like how to approach business planning,...

Strong Wifi is critical to business success

In business we are using more technology than ever and the internet is now an essential service for our business. With an increase demand on online applications and services having good practical secure Wifi is critical. Business demands technology to be mobile, flexible and not hardwired when possible. Sometimes we forget that we are still using the standard modem that...

Shock and Orr Reserve Bank head prepared to make big calls

Currently, it is very difficult to speak of anything but the low interest rates affecting savers and investors. At the time of writing1, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has taken a breather with its September 2019 announcement and left the Official CashRate(OCR)at 1.00%.After the hefty movement of 0.50% “south” on August 7, this is welcomed in most sectors. The...

New Trust Act – are you prepared?

On 30 July 2019, the Trust Act 2019 received Royal Assent signalling a modernisation of trust legislation that, given the number of trusts in New Zealand, we should all be aware of. The new Act will replace the Trustee Act 1956 and its purpose is to make the law more accessible to both trustees and beneficiaries of trusts. Significantly the...

Property investors predict positive investment conditions

Commercial and industrial property investors see positive investment conditions over the next 12 months in Napier and Hastings, according to the latest Colliers International commercial property investor confidence survey. A net positive (optimists minus pessimists) 25 percent of respondents expect investment conditions to improve over the next 12 months, which was up slightly from the previous 2Q 2019 survey. The...

Policy set to protect productive land

In April 2018, MfE and Stats NZ published the Our land 2018 report, which is a comprehensive assessment of how human activity is affecting the state of New Zealand’s land to date. The report identified two main pressures facing highly productive land on the edge of towns and cities: expansion of urban areas, and the accompanying loss of productive land;...

Revitalising the value of Hastings CBD

Williams’ Harvey undertakes a retail shop occupancy survey of the Central Business District (CBD) of Hastings City. The survey is based on retail shop numbers and considers main street retail, side street retail and overall retail vacancies. Our last survey was completed in October 2018 and recorded 10.20% of the retail space within Hastings to be vacant which equates to...

Drive performance by better understanding the numbers

Hawke’s Bay’s economy is booming. The region is experiencing growth across a range of sectors and industries, unemployment numbers are dropping, house prices continue to rise and there is an air of business confidence within the region which is encouraging business owners to look to their future and what opportunities these positive developments could bring. One of these opportunities is...