Keith Hay Homes celebrates 80 years

This year Keith Hay Homes, a New Zealand owned and operated family business, chalks up 80 years of helping Kiwis into their homes, and 80 years of innovative building. 

Now managed by the third generation of the Hay family, over the years the company has specialised in transportable, pre-fabricated, affordable homes featuring New Zealand-grown Pine, innovative design and building methods.
Currently operating in ten locations across the country (historically as many as 25 branches nationwide) Keith Hay Homes started as a sole trader business. 

Keith Hay pioneered the transportable housing market when, in the late 1930s, he won a tender to relocate an American army camp from the Auckland Domain to Panmure by using the novel method of shifting the buildings in large sections. 
New Zealand’s desperate housing shortage post-war provided an opening for an innovative approach – constructing houses in a central assembly yard and then transporting them to suburban locations. Keith Hay was an innovator in the development of house shifting trailers and winches on rubber-tyred tractors.  

“Prefabrication is at the heart of innovative construction and we expect it will play an integral role in shaping the future of New Zealand’s building industry,” says a company spokesperson, adding that low-cost prefabricated housing in New Zealand is as popular and arguably more relevant today as it was in 1938. 

Through the 1950s Hay fought the conservatism of local councils and building societies to make building with Pinus radiata permissible. He was also an innovator in speeding up production methods, cutting labour costs, and incorporating new materials into home construction. 

Today, Keith Hay’s son David Hay is MD and has been working in the business for more than 45 years. David’s daughter Roseanne and son Matthew are third generation family members also involved in the business.  

Photo:   Keith Hay was posthumously inducted into the NZ Business Hall of Fame for his contribution to the building industry.