Cranston Homes goes into liquidation owing creditors $1.5m

Cranston Homes' trade creditors are owed more than $1m. / File photo.

A construction company run by a former Master Builders Association president has failed owing creditors about $1.5 million.

Auckland-based Cranston Homes has multiple House of the Year awards but hit financial difficulty after a string of leaky build claims and last December asked creditors to accept only half of what they were owed.

The firm, run by director Blair Cranston, was put into voluntary liquidation last Friday.

Creditors - which include three customers who paid deposits for houses - are owed around $1.5m, according to co-liquidator Peri Finnigan.

There is likely to only be between $200,000 and $300,000 to be shared among them, she said.

Blair Cranston was a Master Builders' life member and its president from 2010 to 2012.

He was expelled from the organisation last December for breaches of its code of conduct.

The bulk of Cranston Homes' creditors are tradespeople and Finnigan says they are collectively owed between $1.2m and $1.5m.

Glazier Glass Trends is owed about $11,000 and director Geoff Parr said he had written off the debt.

"We've had to take a cut in wages. Being self-employed you get a little bit of margin each year, well that's gone and we've done all that work for free," Parr said.

Concrete cutter and scaffolder Craig Mathers said his business was owed $17,000.

"I'll survive without too much trouble but that's a lot of work wasted," he told the Herald.

One builder owed tens of thousands of dollars, who did not want to be identified, said the liquidation put the pressure on his business.

"It's unfortunate he's gone down but he's taken a lot of other people with him. I'd rather stay out of it to be honest, it's caused me a lot of grief the stress of it," the man said.

Finnigan said customers who had paid house deposits were owed about $160,000.

Auckland woman Shalene Sewdarsen was building a $1m house with Cranston Homes in the Auckland suburb of Albany and says the project had been on-the-go since December 2015.

Sewdarsen had paid other tradespeople to work on the home and believed she was owed tens of thousands of dollars by Cranston Homes.

"It's been quite a nightmare really," she said.

Cranston told the Herald he spent the last few months "feverishly" trying to save the company by lining up investors to inject capital while also dealing with another leaky building claim.

"At the same time I have been working with people who we had contracts with to either keep their houses moving and construction continuing and in some cases to take their construction right through to completion personally," he said.

"I've offered to every one of our customers to finish their home one way or another," he said.

He was "very sympathetic" to creditors and said he's been trying to resolve the situation rather "than run away to Australia".