About
Aurora Property Group manages commercial property for owners who hold them for the long term.
We are a commercial property consultancy firm — portfolio management, facilities management and project management — working nationally from Christchurch. We look after more than 25 properties and over 40 tenancies across New Zealand, from Dunedin, to Christchurch in the south, to Wellington, Hawkes Bay, Tauranga and Auckland in the north.
Our clients are a combination of iwi entities, private owners and investment partnerships. What they have in common is a long-term view: property held to fund something larger, and measured over generations rather than quarters.
Portfolios like these rest on a short list of fundamentals — tenant covenant, long lease terms, rent reviews that keep pace with inflation, seismic resilience, and buildings that stay compliant. Those fundamentals are won at acquisition and then either protected or eroded, month by month, by how the asset is managed. That is our job.
So rent reviews are diarised years ahead and served on time. Lease expiries are worked long before they arrive. Warrants of fitness, compliance schedules and health and safety obligations are tracked, not remembered. Outgoings are reconciled properly, so what a building actually earns is never a surprise. Boards, trustees and investment committees get reporting in the detail they need to make decisions. And where a building needs work, we can scope it, price it and manage it.
Aurora is owned and run by Bevan and Kelly Hames. They have developed and managed commercial property throughout New Zealand since 2018, and we still take the view that the best property management is the kind nobody has to think about.
Our Services
We ensure each property is treated in isolation and receives a targeted management plan and strategy which focuses on the unique ways to maximise returns specific to the asset, as well as individual needs of the shareholders / investors.
As a boutique private operator we are able to deliver a very cost effective structure meaning our clients can enjoy a premium service for competitive fees.
Property Management Services
Portfolio management
Governance-grade reporting to owners, boards and trustees. Budgeting and cashflow forecasting, portfolio performance analysis, and a single view across every asset you hold.
Lease administration
Rent reviews and renewals administered under the machinery of the existing lease — notices prepared and served, time limits observed, the record kept. A lease diary maintained years ahead so no review, expiry or right of renewal arrives unplanned.
Tenant and financial management
Invoicing, arrears control and debt recovery. Operating expense budgets, levies, and annual reconciliation of outgoings. RWT, GST and distribution information prepared for your accountant. Day-to-day liaison with tenants.
Building and facilities management
Building warrants of fitness, compliance schedules and statutory inspections. Insurance administration. Health and safety management under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, including contractor pre-qualification. Planned and reactive maintenance, and continuous review of operating expenditure.
Projects and development
Development and design management. Scoping, procurement and delivery of building works (including strategic growth and/or material capex projects), with consenting and compliance obligations tracked through to code compliance.
Market evidence and valuation
Comparable rental evidence assembled to support a rent review under the terms of the lease, and registered valuations arranged on your behalf.
Systems
The portfolio runs on Re-Leased, integrated with Xero — giving you live access to leases, compliance records, maintenance history and financial reporting rather than a monthly PDF.
Consulting Services
Aurora advises property owners from the owner's side of the table. Most development consultants have only ever worked one side of a project — the fund or the site. We have worked both. That means a feasibility that reflects what a project will actually cost to deliver, and a fit-for-purpose project scope and delivery programme that reflects what the investment case actually needs. We are engaged across the full development cycle, or at any single point in it.
Feasibility and assessment
Assessment of sites and opportunities you are considering, highest and best use analysis, due diligence support, and financial modelling to test an investment case before capital is committed.
Planning and land improvement
Assessment of highest and best use and strategies to deliver. Rezoning, consenting strategy and resource management approvals.
Design management
Assembling and directing the consultant team, and holding the design to the brief, the budget and the programme.
Development and construction management
Procurement, contract administration and delivery oversight. We manage the scope, programme, budget, and the consultant and contractor teams. You contract directly with the builder, and we act for you within that contract — so the accountability sits where it belongs.
Investment and fund advisory
Portfolio strategy, asset repositioning, and reporting to boards, trustees and investment committees. We work across office, industrial; large-format retail and mixed-use sectors; including retirement living. This ranges from large-scale master-planning / place-making, through to one-off projects.
Bevan Hames
Bevan Hames leads Aurora's consultancy. He has over 20 years in fund management, property development and construction across New Zealand and Australia, including senior executive roles with ESR Property, Wesfarmers Property Group and Apollo Projects, and part-ownership of private development companies. He is a partner in a New Zealand property funds management and investment firm, where he serves as general manager of its commercial, housing and development funds.
Sample of Properties Under Management
Mandeville Village
A modern neighbourhood retail centre serving Mandeville North and the surrounding Waimakariri district, purpose-built and completed in 2018. Nine tenancies, anchored by the FreshChoice Mandeville supermarket, alongside an NPD service station, an early childhood centre, a café, bar and restaurant, takeaway outlets and a bakery. The centre is architecturally designed with a rural character suited to its setting, with on-site parking throughout. The site has recently been rezoned to a Local Centre zone (managed by Aurora) increasing land-use permissibility / activity optionality. Seismic Rating: 100% NBS
152 Devonport Road
A four-level commercial office building on a prominent corner site in central Tauranga — one of the first office buildings in the Bay of Plenty to achieve a Green Star design rating.
Two levels of basement car parking sit beneath a ground floor of retail and office space, with three further levels of office accommodation above. The upper floors look out over the Tauranga central business district and the harbour beyond.
The building was designed around its environmental performance. A heat recovery ventilation system reclaims energy from the building's extracts and re-uses it to heat and cool the air. Lighting is grouped into efficient zones with occupancy sensors, occupants are given guides to control the heating and services in their own space, and the structure contains a high proportion of recycled steel.
Green Star: Greenstar Design
Seismic Rating: 100% NBS
150 George Street
The Farmers Department Store on Dunedin's golden mile. Two levels of large format retail with associated loading and storage, and a third level of office accommodation above.
The building sits on the eastern side of George Street, five minutes' walk from the Octagon, and is one of very few large format retail sites in central Dunedin..
Seismic rating 100% NBS
52 Great King Street
A six-storey A-grade commercial office and car park development in central Ōtepoti Dunedin, one block from the city's new hospital precinct. Anchor tenants are Pacific Radiology and Inland Revenue, with the building well suited to professional and medical occupiers.
The building has a Green Star 5 rating, uncommon in the Dunedin market, and its architecture reflects the cultural history of the site. On-site parking is managed by the Dunedin City Council, and the car park also serves the George Street retail block one block east.
Green Star 5 Star Greenstar Design & As Built
Seismic Rating: 100% NBS
Ziwi Super Kitchen
A large-scale pet food manufacturing facility in New Zealand, purpose-built for Ziwi, a New Zealand manufacturer and exporter specialising in air-dried pet food.
The facility accommodates laboratory, product development, food-grade and wet production, and dry and freezer storage — a combination requiring complex specialist detailing and finishes throughout. The design and construction provide a hygienic, durable and highly insulated internal environment, capable of holding the room temperatures each process requires.
The building sits within the Awatoto industrial precinct in Hawke's Bay.
Seismic Rating: 100% NBS