KEY POINTS:
A widow who thought she had bought a central Auckland apartment through Blue Chip has discovered she actually invested in a carpark next door.
She also found she does not have title to the carpark.
The 70-year-old Bay of Plenty woman, who does not want to be identified,
said she and her family went to visit unit 404 at 22 Emily Place before investing in May 2006.
Her son owned an apartment in the same street, so she was familiar with the area.
The apartment was to be refurbished and rented out for short stays, she said, and was empty at the time she viewed it.
Despite her lawyer being against the idea, she followed the advice of a Blue Chip adviser friend and took out a $181,000 mortgage on her family trust-owned home to invest in a Blue Chip joint venture.
She received a $400 monthly "procurement fee", and Blue Chip covered the $1300-a-month mortgage.
"It was going along nicely, and I thought, 'Oh well, I'm set for retirement'," she said.
Last October, the procurement fees stopped. By February, Blue Chip had stopped paying the mortgage. The woman has since been forced to cover it.
When the payments stopped, the family looked into taking over the apartment and renting it out themselves. The woman's son went to see the building manager and discovered that the apartment had been owned by a man on Waiheke Island for the past two years.
The Waiheke owner confirmed he had refurbished the apartment and had had tenants in it for 18 months.
The son then checked the certificate of title on the sale-and-purchase agreement for unit 404 which his mother held, and found it referred to a carpark on the next-door property.
Quotable Value records show that site is owned by Ile My Ltd, a company associated with Blue Chip co-founder Mark Bryers.
The woman said there was no mention on the title of the family trust that owns her home, or of the trustee company she was required to set up to make the Emily Place investment.
"I don't own anything. What I've got I've earned and worked for, and now it's going down Blue Chip's drain."
Blue Chip was to develop a 149-unit apartment building in Emily Place, and the future apartments were being sold through a company called Becroft, which is now one of the 22 Blue Chip companies in liquidation.
Liquidators Meltzer Mason Heath have said the development is not proceeding, and any claims for funds owed need to be made against Becroft.
The woman's Blue Chip adviser friend referred her to Auckland property lawyer Zeljan Unkovich, who acted for her on the investment.
Mr Unkovich said yesterday that he did not know how the mix-up could have occurred, and believed the woman was mistaken in thinking she had invested in an existing apartment.
