Eli Thomas and Sophie Annen with daughter Charlie-Rose fear they'll spend 30-years paying a mortgage for a home they don't have. Photo / Dave Lintott
Eli Thomas and Sophie Annen with daughter Charlie-Rose fear they'll spend 30-years paying a mortgage for a home they don't have. Photo / Dave Lintott
Families who lost their life savings in the $5 million collapse of a tiny home building company will have to wait for a court ruling to find out whether they can recover any of their money.
That includes young parents Eli Thomas and Sophie Annen who recently starteda Givealittle page asking for help after they spent about $375,000 paying for a kitset home from Podular Housing Systems Ltd that was never delivered to them.
Podular instead went into liquidation on November 25 last year, owing an estimated $5.2m to 217 creditors.
Thomas and Annen’s home was one of about 20 that were in the process of being built in Podular’s factories, but which were never completed and given to customers.
Despite customers like Thomas and Annen paying hundreds of thousands of dollars, ownership of the incomplete homes is now in dispute.
The question is whether the customers can take possession of what’s so far been built to either try to finish the builds or whether liquidator Gerry Rea Partners can instead take ownership and sell off the builds.
Ben Francis, senior insolvency manager from Gerry Rea Partners, said his team will seek a legal ruling from the court to determine the matter.
“We have advised the creditors that we intend to apply to the High Court for directions to clarify this point,” he said.
“Assets wont be sold until the entitlement is confirmed.”
Podular’s collapse is one of the largest failures in the modular home sector, an industry that is seen by some as key in helping ease the nation’s housing crisis by building more homes faster.
Eli Thomas and Sophie Annen with daughter Charlie-Rose at the site of their unbuilt house in South Wairarapa. Photo / Dave Lintott
Eli Thomas and Sophie Annen have set up a Givealittle page to seek help. Photo / Dave Lintott
The company claimed to build fast, kitset homes - that could also be customisable - in its factories and then deliver them to customers’ properties.
The homes could range from small, backyard one-bedroom units for extra family members or renters to larger homes and coastal baches.
Eli Thomas entrusted his life savings with Podular to build his dream family home.
He had made $350,000 in progress payments and paid $25,000 in bank interest payments for the home Podular promised to build in its Hamilton factory before delivering it to Thomas’ picturesque Martinborough property, about 80km north of Wellington.
The home should’ve arrived in February 2022, ahead of the April birth of Thomas and Annen’s daughter Charlie-Rose, he said.
However, Podular failed to complete the home before it went into liquidation.
Thomas said the company told him in about October last year they were just six weeks away from finishing the house.
“Instead, they just kept on taking on other builds and pushing our one further and further down the line,” he said.
The build had been sitting in Hamilton and was “probably one of the most completed builds”, Thomas, who made repeated visits to Podular’s factory to complete progress checks on the home, said.
“It’s so close to being done, it’s fully weathertight - it just doesn’t have the interior,” he said.
“It’s to the point where we just want it, we just want the house even as it is.”
“We’d just go and pick it up on a truck if we could.”
Podular’s collapse is likely to spell financial ruin for Thomas and his young family, who borrowed most of the $350,000 in down payments paid to Podular from the bank.
“If I lose the house and I lose the money, I’m going to spend the rest of my life paying a mortgage on a house I don’t have,” he said.
“I’ve poured 20 years of my life savings into my first new house build, and it’s just heartbreaking.”
Now the one-income family is facing rising interest rates and cost of living expenses and had been stuck living in a cabin with a young baby.
“It’s a dark time full of fear and uncertainty,” the couple said on the page.
Thomas and Annen are one of 13 customers to previously share their stories with the Herald, saying they’ve lost jobs and been left in tears and feeling physically sick from the stress of dealing with Podular and its director Charles Innes.
Others such as Wellington doctors Kathryn Percival and David Pirotta said they paid more than $500,000 in progress payments for a home that was supposed to be delivered to their Malborough Sounds property in the South Island but was never delivered.
They also want to take possession of their incomplete build and have hired a lawyer to represent them.
