Jailed tax evader’s leaky St Lukes apartment for sale at huge discount – but there’s a catch

An Auckland apartment owned by a jailed tax evader has been listed for sale by the High Court at a huge discount – but it comes with a major catch.

Paul Harding said he paid about $400,000 for the inner city unit more than a decade ago, but lost his home in 2023 after being tipped into bankruptcy over a tax debt of nearly half a million dollars.

Now, a real estate agent said the three-bedroom apartment, located a short stroll from Westfield St Lukes mall, could sell for as little as $50,000.

However, potential buyers will need to fork out at least $600,000 for leaky building repairs – and possibly more.

That’s because the home is part of the St Lukes Garden Apartments development, the country’s largest leaky building repair project that is now under court-ordered administration because of delays and rising costs.

“Nobody is willing to buy,” Barfoot & Thompson agent Peter Wu said of the 102sq m unit.

“We are marketing the property at $50,000 to $100,000 but nobody is interested.

“The reality is the purchaser needs to pay a $600,000-$700,000 renovation fee to the body corporate.”

The St Lukes apartment is awaiting remedial work and currently can't be accessed by the real estate agent or potential buyers. Photo / Supplied

Harding was found guilty of evading core tax of $385,872 in 2022 after failing to provide income tax and GST returns for 10 years.

He served 10 months in prison – rubbing shoulders with Grace Millane’s killer Jesse Kempson and disgraced real estate agent and fraudster Aaron Drever – before being released in January 2023.

In May that year police and debt collectors seized the St Lukes unit owned by Harding and his wife Julie, booting them out of the property they had called home since 2014.

As a bankrupt, Harding’s home was ordered to be sold, with half the proceeds going to the IRD and half going to his wife.

St Lukes Garden Apartments is a 17-building, 285-unit project undergoing a $240m repair project. Photo / Mike Scott

However, more than two years on, the vacant property remains on the market and Julie is yet to receive a cent.

The couple are now living with Julie’s mother in West Auckland and are both receiving benefits, with Paul telling the Herald they barely have enough to put food on the table.

Though the forced sale was supposed to recoup his tax debt, any proceeds were now unlikely to cover litigation costs and the couple feared they would get nothing back on their investment.

“Julie was paying the mortgage and the body corp fees while I was in prison, then they just came along and chucked us out,” Paul said.

“We haven’t received a dime. They haven’t sold the property. It’s been shelved, it’s empty, it’s just madness.”

Paul said the pair felt they had been “shafted” by authorities.

“I owed the Government some tax money but it wasn’t f***in’ millions.”

Paul Harding's St Lukes Garden Apartments unit needs extensive repair work, which the new buyer will have to fund. Photo / Supplied

He said they only discovered the apartment was defective after the 2014 purchase.

And when the scale of the St Lukes disaster began to emerge, the repair invoices rolled in, with the body corporate “asking for chunks and chunks of money”.

Paul estimated they paid about $30,000-$40,000 in remediation levies before losing the apartment, but work on their unit has yet to begin.

The unit is in block 20, whose owners have just received invoices of up to $195,000 each for the next stage of repairs, with further invoices to come.

Documents obtained by the Herald show total repair costs for some apartments are expected to top $800,000 and the overall remediation project is set to surpass $240 million.

Paul said the development was a great place to live 10 years ago but had become a “ghost town”.

He felt for those owners still trapped in unsaleable apartments as repair costs continued to mount.

Asked about his time in prison, Paul said “you make your own luck”.

“I got a job in the kitchen and managed to keep my nose clean.”

In his unit was Grace Millane’s killer Jesse Kempson, who Paul described as “a bit of a quiet fella”.

“We didn’t really cross paths.”

Convicted fraudster Aaron Drever worked alongside Paul in the prison kitchen, where Drever was attacked by another inmate with a metal hook in November 2022.

Paul described Drever as “a bit of a shifty fella” but said the pair got on well.

Now out of prison and trying to rebuild his life, Paul said he and his wife were only “one step away from being on the street”.

They hoped the apartment would be sold and half of the proceeds handed over so they could move on.

Paul and Julie Harding's apartment is one of about 280 in the St Lukes Garden Apartment complex undergoing extensive remedial works for major defects. Photo / Supplied

Barfoot marketing material describes the apartment as “very affordable”.

Property agent Wu said the Auckland apartment market was stagnant.

The St Lukes apartment had been on the market for about six months. But access was restricted because of construction work and he could not take potential buyers inside.

While the apartment would be valued at about $700,000 once fully renovated, the upfront repair costs put most buyers off, Wu said.

“Nobody is interested.”

Lane Nichols is Auckland desk editor for the New Zealand Herald with more than 20 years’ experience in the industry.

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