Norgate in clash over leaky house

By BERNARD ORSMAN

Former Fonterra boss Craig Norgate is fighting claims he sold a home on Waiheke Island without telling the buyers it leaked and would cost $100,000 to fix.

The revelation caps a bad year for Mr Norgate, who lost his job as New Zealand's highest-paid executive and appeared in court on a driving charge.

Mr Norgate told the Weekend Herald he was going to court to force a settlement on the Ostend house after the buyers, Christine West and William Hawken, refused to pay.

"They are in default. They are just trying to take advantage of my position with some adverse publicity and I'm refusing to yield to it," Mr Norgate said.

The house sold for an undisclosed sum in April when Mr Norgate was chief executive of the giant dairy company Fonterra and making $38,000 a week.

The three-storey Tuscan-style house, with a peek of the sea, was built in the late 1990s by a Waiheke couple, Glenn and Lynda Perry.

Mr Norgate bought it for $575,000 in October 2001. He now lives with wife Jane and their three children at a $3 million home on Ronaki Rd in Mission Bay.

A source told the Weekend Herald that after he bought the house, Mr Norgate had a building inspection done on the property.

This showed it needed $100,000 to fix leaky building problems.

Some work was done on the house, but the substantial problems were left unfixed.

Mr Norgate put the house on the market through Bayleys. The agent who handled the sale, Clive Lonergan, said client confidentiality prevented him from commenting.

The source said it was not until after the sale to Christine West and Mr Hawken went unconditional that the couple discovered the problems.

On April 15, Christine West took the legal step of issuing a caveat to stop anything happening to the property.

Asked if the couple raised the leaky building problems after the sale went unconditional, Mr Norgate said: "It wasn't even discovered until after it went unconditional."

Asked about the claim that $100,000 of work was needed on the property, Mr Norgate said the couple had made all sorts of claims.

He said his lawyer had affidavits which categorically refuted the claims.

Mr Hawken said he had spoken to a barrister, and had decided not to comment on the dispute.

Auckland lawyer Paul Grimshaw, who specialises in leaky building litigation, said the new owners could have a legal case against Mr Norgate if they could prove he knew about the problems.

Otherwise, they could take legal action against the Auckland City Council for not finding the problem, the architect, the builder or perhaps the developer.

If they succeeded in a legal action, they could get damages, costs, about $20,000 compensation and interest.