Owners seek $1.2m in redress for rotting houses

By ANNE GIBSON


A group of Ponsonby residents is taking a $1.2 million claim against authorities over leaks in their townhouse complex so acute that it has been partially demolished and rebuilt.

After tearing up floors, ripping down exterior and interior walls then rebuilding the townhouses, the owners say they now want justice.

They are seeking money from Auckland City Council, which carried out inspections and signed off building work; developer Tim Manning who, through his Taradale Properties empire, built the townhouses; architect Peter Townsend, of the former Jessop Townsend Architects, who designed them; Architectural Waterproofing, which applied waterproofing membranes to the decks; and Bruce Christian and Stephen Lay, formerly of Taradale, who worked on the project.

The council has drawn the Building Industry Authority into the adjudication process, due to go before the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service on Monday.

But the council's principal building officer, Bob de Leur, said that the Ponsonby residents were partly to blame because "the seriousness of the issues faced by the individual unit owners" was not brought to his attention until six years after the townhouses were built.

Had problems been flagged earlier, he said, the council could have issued notices to rectify or taken steps to prevent the deterioration of the units.

The owners of the 10 standalone townhouses, built between 1995 and 1996 at 63 Vermont St, are fighting for compensation to repay the $600,000 worth of repairs carried out last year.

Since the houses went up nearly a decade ago, they have been rotting throughout, and residents have developed health problems they say are from toxic mould.

But they are claiming much more than just the cost of the repairs. Like owners of the leaky Greenwich Park near the Southern Motorway, the Ponsonby residents want compensation for the stress they've endured.

Owners of seven townhouses have joined in the legal claim. John Gray, who bought a unit for $440,000 in 1996, said owners of the remaining three townhouse were either non-residents or waiting to see how the adjudication went.

"The whole thing has prevented me from taking promotions at work," said Mr Gray, an international pilot for Air New Zealand.

He accused Auckland City Council of failing to ensure the buildings were built in accordance with the building code.

"Yet they will not accept liability. They keep on blaming everyone else and using all manner of methods to make sure we don't get as much money as we need."

Mr Gray said he had had to take extensive sick leave because of long-running respiratory health problems caused by toxic mould in his townhouse.

But in his defence statement, Bob de Leur of the council defended the council's role. "The council officers have to rely upon the builder (in this case Taradale) to ensure that the works are undertaken in a competent manner," he said. "They cannot be on site all day, every day."

But he acknowledged that although the plans showed a drained cavity behind the exterior stucco walls, this was never built.

Defects complained of by the townhouse owners "were either not visible to council officers during inspection or would not have been of concern to them", he said.

Mr Manning has denied liability and partly blamed the townhouse owners.

"There was contributory negligence by the claimants in failing to obtain a building inspection before purchase," he said.

"Clearly something went wrong with these houses and I have sympathy for the claimants. Obviously no developer sets out to build leaky houses and no developer sets out to build shoddy houses," his statement said.

"But at all times I was acting in my capacity as a director of Taradale Ponsonby Gardens. I did not participate in any of the physical building work. I am not a builder."

Who's responsible?

Targets of the $1.2 million legal claim include:

Developer Tim Manning: Built the townhouses through his Taradale network of property companies. Taradale's other leaking developments have included Sacramento in Botany Downs, The Grange in Albany, Vista Rosa in Mt Albert and West End in Grey Lynn.

Auckland City Council: Inspected and approved the building work. By last month it had been named in 84 claims before the Weathertight Homes Resolution Service and in 54 court cases.

Building Industry Authority: Wrote the building code and is ultimately responsible for building standards. The authority (drawn into this adjudication process by the council) was previously named as a defendant in a leaky building case that was settled out of court.