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CR&S 2010
Our
marketplace
We have placed stand-alone Customer
Feedback Units in all of our centres to
gain first-hand feedback on the parents
room, food court and customers’
overall experience. Over 60 per cent
of our shoppers indicated they would
recommend our centre to associates –
a slight decrease on our previous year’s
result of 65 per cent. Our positive results
reflect the work done on initiatives,
such as upgraded parents rooms, are
having on our customers’ experience.
To ensure superior service across our
key customer touchpoints (Customer
Care staff in our centres and Service
Centre representatives in our call
centre), we have undertaken customer
service training in conjunction with the
Customer Service Institute of Australia
(CSIA). To date 36 frontline Customer
Service team members have completed
or are in the final stages of completing a
Certificate IV in Customer Service. Our
aim is to ensure continuous improvement
in customer service standards across
all our retail assets.
We have also received feedback from
customers that contractors, cleaning, and
security managers are seen as key points
of contact and have an impact on our
customers’ experience in centres. As part
of our commitment to customer service,
we have created training modules to help
these teams maintain high standards
of customer service. The first of these
modules will be introduced in July 2010
and will be facilitated by our centre
Marketing Managers.
Livable housing design
During FY10 we participated in the
development of the National Dialogue on
Universal Housing Design’s Strategic Plan
and Livable Housing Design Guidelines.
Other participants included industry
groups, government agencies and other
property groups.
Livable housing design means designing
homes to meet the changing needs
of occupants across their lifetime. The
guidelines set out key easy living features
that aim to make homes easier and safer
to use for all occupants including: people
with a disability, ageing Australians,
people with temporary injuries and families
with young children.
Over the next year we will develop and
roll out livable housing design guidelines
across our organisation. We are
committed to meeting the voluntary target
set out in the Strategic Plan, whereby
all new retirement living dwellings are to
be designed and built to meet the ‘silver
standard’ in FY11, and 25% of our new
residential community homes are to
meet the ‘silver standard’ by 2013. The
‘silver standard’ includes features such
as reinforced bathroom walls, a flat entry
to the house and wide corridors and
doorways.
Housing Affordability
A lack of affordable housing is one of
the biggest challenges facing Australians
today. The current undersupply of houses
in Australia of approximately 200,000
is expected to continue, given that
population growth has been well above
the number of homes being built since
2006. This will continue to place pressure
on house prices over time.
The national benchmark that is most
frequently used to assess housing
affordability is the percentage of
disposable income that goes towards
mortgage repayments. When this is more
than 35 per cent, housing is considered
to be ‘unaffordable’. The Australian
average is close to this now.
As Australia’s largest residential developer,
delivering affordable housing is important
to us. Masterplanned communities can
offer product and price flexibility not
available in the established market because
of the variety of prices in the different
product offerings. Our projects are
generally more affordable than the local
median house price within the established
market in the local area (based on our
analysis of a sub-set of projects).
We focused on four initiatives to improve
housing affordability in FY10.
Affordability Benchmark Tool
We believe that affordability benchmarking
is most meaningful and accurate when
conducted at the local rather than national
level. We have developed the Affordability
Benchmark Tool to assess the financial
capacity of discreet buyer segments
within our local catchments. This helps
us to understand what each buyer type
can afford.
‘Product to market’ matching
process
As part of our six-monthly business
planning, we use the Affordability
Benchmark Tool, along with other inputs, to
determine whether each project is meeting
market expectations for product and price.
Affordable house and land
product innovation
We are working on reducing the price
of entry level house and land packages.
An example of this is our Waterside Town
Houses in New South Wales.
Waterside is a project located at the edge
of the Penrith Lakes District that includes
584 lots, 34 per cent of which has already
been sold. The current price range for land
alone is $199,000–$280,000 which means
that entry-level house and land packages
start at $400,000. To significantly reduce
the entry price at Waterside we are
developing 100 attached, mainly twobedroom
Town Houses. The houses
will have a starting price of $290,000.
We have also reduced the average lot
size to improve affordability. This year
24 per cent of our lots were under 400m 2
whereas only 16 per cent of lots were
below this size last year.
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Stockland Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability Report June 2010