Remuera landlord seeks more than $1 million in unpaid rent after kicking tenants out

Tenants of a Remuera block have been ordered to pay more than $1 million in unpaid rent. Photo / File

Tenants of a Remuera block have been ordered to pay more than $1 million in unpaid rent after being kicked out by their landlord.

The property, on 267 Remuera Rd, is an apartment complex comprised of 21 separate units owned by KOL Holdings Limited. Checks with the Companies Office showed it had two directors, Anthony David Frith and Anna Kristina Frith.

The company is seeking payment from eleven tenants, each a lessee of the property having leasehold interests in one or more of the units.

The tenants are named as Zhen Xu, Jack Mein Ho, Susan Milnes and Graham Monckton Milnes, Julius Domenico Tremamondo Regentio, Edouard Melamed, Carolanne Meyrick, Poh Khean Tan and Elizabeth Grace Tan, Carolyn Frances Critchley, Enigma Residential Limited, A E Hans Tan, and Shiming Li and Hui Qiong Wang.

Their property was leased for an initial term of 21 years, starting on January 1, 2014, when the registered proprietor and lessor at the time was the Dilworth Trust Board.

The annual rent was then $250,000 plus GST, subject to seven-yearly rent reviews. KOL bought the property around 2017 with the lease in place.

According to court documents, KOL said respondents first breached their obligation to pay rent in 2020. Late rental payments were settled only after mediation and cancellations were served on the tenants.

In December that year, the tenants were given a written notice that rent would be increased from $250,000 to $645,000 plus GST per annum.

Each six-monthly payment was to be $341,850, but KOL said the tenants failed to pay rent on June 30 and December 31, and despite notices, the tenants failed to remedy the breach of failing to pay.

The dispute could not be resolved and a proceeding was filed and served, but most of the lessees or their tenants continued to occupy the property. But due to non-payment for power, electricity was cut off, resulting in all the units except one being vacated.

Judge Gordon said that given there were no notices of opposition filed and no apparent tenable dispute requiring arbitration, he ordered for possession of the property and that the lease be cancelled.

He ordered for a sum of outstanding rental of $1,036,242, overdue rates of $115,128.66 and costs of enforcement and recovery of $27,891.50 to be paid by the tenants "jointly and severally" to the landlord.

Tenants Milnes and Milnes, Melamed and Enigma Residential Limited, however, had entered into agreements to pay sums to reduce the arrears and are not included in the order.