Out of court settlements are on the rise
It appears that a new batch of damaged homes will enter our market over the next few years. It is quite remarkable that come 13 years after our EQ events we are still dealing with the aftermath.
This is not good for our property sector at all.
Unwary, inexperienced buyers are the target audience for savvy property brokers looking to purchase these houses at low cost, and flick them on for a decent profit. Damage that should have been repaired, and to a high standard, in many cases still remains, incomplete, hidden or deliberately obscured.
Is the Christchurch City Council somehow complicit in all of this? Have the Council failed ratepayers? Those are questions that should be put to the CEO of CCC to investigate and provide answers.
It is clear that our regular complaints to the Christchurch City Council have been ignored. Do these complaints fall on deaf ears, or are the staff within the consents team discouraged from voicing their opinions for fear of retribution from their managers? Apparently that may be the case from comments made from those wishing to remain anonymous. Talking with others in the industry we suspect that the latter holds true. The same managers seem to remain in their roles, therefore it is assumed they have known about numerous, and significant, issues relating in particular to the Building Act exemptions for at least 5 years. Yet nothing seems to have changed. Worse still, the purchasers of these houses are completely unaware of the future risks they may face with the house they have just acquired, especially when they come to sell the house in the future.
Engineers working in this space have also voiced their concerns & complaints about exemptions. Their fellow Engineers have come under scrutiny, especially when any reasonable person would take the complaint on face value and investigate, yet somehow any processes seem to stall, eventually coming to a complete stop when the opposite should be true. Nothing seems to be pursued beyond the initial complaint, despite compelling evidence being made available. It appears no one is wanting to rock the boat. One wonders why this is the case.
It is not unreasonable for the public to expect more.
When you have builders producing limited, seemingly misleading PS3’s, Chartered Professional Engineers designing suspect repair methodologies, and then worse signing Ps4’s when it can be shown the work does not comply with the Ps1 submitted to Council, it shows we have real problems. Furthermore, when these matters are queried with Council staff, the only response we seem to receive is ‘well… it is not our responsibility…as these are discretionary exemptions…..’. We quite rightly ask ‘then who the hell is responsible?’
This current merry-go-round of deceptive behaviour needs to stop.
A message for buyers
If you are looking to buy at Auction, please don’t. Seriously, I mean it.
If the house was built before the 2010 Earthquake events, then you need time to gather a lot of data to ensure you are not buying someone else’s problem, or someone else’s quick-flip.
Data. Data is required and you need time to research, clarify and challenge this data. Auctions are designed to limit access to sound data. Once you bid at auction, and if you are indeed the highest bidder, you have limited options to challenge the data after the auction.
The biggest issue we face in NZ is that no one is prepared to admit error, take responsibility or take a loss on the sale of a property. Profit it appears must trump everything. Profit before everything else, seems to be mantra of today’s property flippers, who in many circumstances are profiting to the tune of $200,000.00 on houses where unrepaired earthquake damage still remains. They could have repaired the damage, and to a high standard and still made a profit, yet many choose money over morals.
Phone Risknet 022 609 6026 before you put pen to paper when purchasing a property in the wider Christchurch region.
The link will expire at some stage…