Christchurch developer, Williams Corporation, is offering redundancy to 10 to 30 percent of its staff, in New Zealand, Australia and Asia.

Company founders Matthew Horncastle and Blair Chappell have asked staff who wants to go.

Horncastle said in 2022, the company sold 800 homes, and next year will sell 500 homes.

“We are currently overstaffed. We will reduce our staff by 10-30 percent so we don’t have staff sitting around next year with nothing to do.

We doing optional redundancy, where any staff that want to leave get paid an extra month on top of their contract redundancy.”

Horncastle said 5 percent of the team had taken that offer.

“I also think sales will increase, so I think it will be minor and for a short time. It is just sensible business. Success is not a factor in the decision.”

Horncastle, who owns 25 homes, said the company was still looking to fill roles advertised on Seek.

There are still sectors where we’re employing staff, like project managers in Wellington, for example.”

“It’s just intelligent business, as the market isn’t as big as it was last year.

The staff aren’t surprised by this, as they see the sales figures every month, We’re a very transparent business. I’m happy with the way we’ve gone about it.” Horncastle said.

We’ve gone from 800 homes a year to 500 a year, so we’re still building a lot of houses, and this is not a forced financial decision” he told Chris Lynch Media.

“When a business like Williams Corporation gets smaller, our cash equity position ($52 million) becomes a larger percentage of the work in progress. Plus we hardly have any bank debt, We are mostly self-funded with our $150 Million under management.”

On Instagram, Horncastle admitted it was a mistake to open three Australian offices at the same time.

“We didn’t have the human capital to make it work, so now we are just focusing on Brisbane until we are delivering homes.”