From Blueprint to Build: GRAYA’s Growth Story with STAC Capital

It’s been a steep growth trajectory for south-east Queensland luxury developer GRAYA, and its property finance advisory partners, STAC Capital. 

From small, single-dwelling jobs to high-end multi-residential developments, Rob and Andrew Gray are finding true success as a vertically integrated builder-developer, and nabbing a swag of awards and big sales along the way. 

The Urban Developer has partnered with GRAYA and development finance advisory group STAC Capital to unpack their recipe for success in Australia’s fastest-growing region. 

In the first episode of From Blueprint to Build: GRAYA’s Growth Story with STAC Capital we pull back the curtains on the Instagram-famous builder-developer’s origins and design ethos. 

“Our goal is to make every project a landmark,” Graya co-founder Andrew Gray says. 

“But there’s no such thing as overnight success, it’s really taken us 10 years of grinding to feel like we’re really getting somewhere,” his brother, Rob Gray, adds.

“We were doing multiple houses at a time, I think we got up to 15 houses a year, and we soon realised that to really scale and to go in the direction we really wanted to was to get into multi-residential. 

“But we didn’t want to give away our souls and do investor stock. We really wanted to stick in the luxury space that we’re super passionate about.”

While it hasn’t been an overnight success for GRAYA it has been a strong focus on design, aesthetics and social media. 

STAC Capital has also carved a niche into the property finance market in south-east Queensland and further afield across a similar timeframe. 

Co-founder Dale Sparke said after a long career in banking he and co-founder Mark Trayner realised their passion for helping clients get their projects funded, and established the STAC Capital brand.

“We wanted to be independent and start a business where we could negotiate with banks and non-banks to secure funding for clients’ projects,” Sparke says.

Trayner says “pre-GFC, relationship banking really meant something”, but times had changed. 

“If a client or developer had good projects then every bank would do it, and it was genuinely about relationships,” he says. 

“But that increasingly became not so much a factor. Now it’s really about box-ticking and appetites change, and a really good deal for a really good client can be a great deal at one bank and another bank just doesn’t want to do it.”

This is the first of the three-episode series, which explores the unique relationship between GRAYA and their funding advisory partners STAC Capital. Subscribe to our YouTube and social media channels for more.