Single Mum Christine O'Connor (left) says she doesn't have the money for the works needed, or to take legal actions against anyone. Harjinder Singh Brar (middle) and Manjot Singh (right) are in a similar position. Photo / Lucy Xia, RNZ
By Lucy Xia of RNZ
Another group of West Auckland home owners – including young families and a single mum – have been blindsided by the council telling them that front and backyards of their new builds do not meet resource consent requirements, more than a year after they purchased the homes.
Faced with a much delayed council inspection and a liquidated developer, owners say they have been unfairly left to pay thousands for the landscaping work that should’ve been done when the homes were sold.
The Auckland Council said its environmental monitoring team was stretched and struggling to keep up with the increasing workload from housing intensification.
It was unable to tell RNZ how much backlog of sold properties with unclosed resource consents it was dealing with, after a declined Official Information Act (OIA) request and multiple follow-ups.
Since RNZ’s reporting on a group of new home owners in Massey, who said they were misled into buying homes with unclosed resource consents, more homeowners in similar situations are speaking up.
Ten townhouses on Purapura Lane in a Kumeū development do not have the fences, or trees in the original resource consent plans. Where there was meant to be soil and plantings, there is concrete and live cables underneath.
The developer, Treasure North Limited, owes more than $1.6 million to creditors, and RNZ has not been able to reach it after an unsuccessful attempt trying to reach them through their liquidator and doorknocking director Qingmiao Liu’s address.
The Auckland Council said it issued an abatement notice to the developer in late 2023, and had followed up five times.
Four families who are affected told RNZ that none of their lawyers or real estate agents warned them about the abatement notice or the unclosed resource consent, and agents had told them they could do what they wanted with the front and back of their homes.
Christine O’Connor, who purchased her home in early 2024, said she was shocked to be told by the council last month that her house did not comply with its resource consent.
The mum of three was first told that her deck – which came with the house – was not the correct dimensions, and that she needed to replace an area of concrete in front of her home with soil and trees,
“There’s live cables under a slab that the environmental monitoring unit is telling us to rip up,” she said.
O’Connor said the council backtracked five days later, saying that she doesn’t need to make the changes and that it will let her meet the requirements, only to revert back a few days later to say that she still needs to make the changes.
O’Connor said she does not have the money for the work needed, or to take legal actions against anyone.
“I’m a single mum, I don’t have the funds to go up against a real estate agent, a liquidated developer or a lawyer. Like to me, it’s just in the too hard basket. I just want to get something resolved with the council,” she said.
“I think that they need to look at each property individually and say well we’ve actually done our landscaping, which actually fits quite nicely into the environment, well let’s just stick to that,” she added.
Since RNZ’s queries to the Auckland Council, O’Connor has received another email this week saying she and her neighbours no longer needed to replace the concrete area.
The email said after consulting an engineering specialist to review her concerns about the electrical cables beneath the concrete area, the council has decided that the concrete area can remain in place across the 10 homes.
O’Connor said she bought her property based on it being completed, and did not understand why the law allowed the homes to be sold in the first place.
“Why should a developer sell a property when there’s an abatement notice? They shouldn’t be allowed to do that. How’s that fair for people that are purchasing a property, how do we know there’s issues with the developer, it’s absolutely disgusting, this country needs to ... there needs to be something sorted,” she said.
The current Resource Management Act (RMA) does not stop a property being sold while an unresolved abatement notice is in place.
Properties can also be legally sold without having passed the council’s final inspection for resource consent compliance.
O’Connor’s neighbour, Dhruval Gosai, who also purchased on Purapura Lane more than a year ago, had done her own landscaping, but estimated it would cost her more than $10,000 to make changes to meet consent standards.
“We are a young couple, who are hardly earning anything, and we are just paying our mortgages ... there’s no way we can pay,” she said.
Gosai said she felt deceived by the developer, and ripped off by her lawyer and her real estate agent who failed to disclose the unclosed consent.
She said the council’s environmental officer has told her that if she asked more questions, they would need to charge her for their time.
“Councils and environmental officers are being paid for what they’re doing – they just need to do their jobs. This needs to be paid by council not customers,” she said.
The Auckland Council said the RMA allowed it to recover reasonable costs of monitoring resource consents, and that it was not covered by general rates because they relate to activities that benefit individual property owners.
It said monitoring officers typically charge $198 per hour.
Gosai said this experience had made her lose confidence in New Zealand and the council.
“I think New Zealand is not even a developing country, that’s what I feel now by Auckland Council.
“I’m basically from India, so India is one of the developing countries, by the looks of it, when we are buying house back in our country, we know what we’re doing actually, and we know how councils in India work, but Auckland Council is s***,” she said.
Auckland Council environmental monitoring manager Robert Laulala said he understood the frustration, but that he had limited tools and staffing to work with.
“Our priority is ensuring compliance and protecting the environment, but current legislation limits the tools available to us.
“We continue to use every option within the law and advocate for stronger enforcement powers to hold developers accountable.”
He said in the Kumeū case, the developer failed to advise the council when works were completed, which was a key step in triggering the final inspection.
“Without this notification, the council is unaware that the site is ready for sign-off,” he said.
Earlier, Laulala told RNZ it could take anywhere between a month to seven months for the final resource consent checks to be done after the building is complete.
However, RNZ has been sent news tips from owners who have been sent abatement notices three years after they purchased their homes.
RNZ has sent an OIA request asking for data on the average number of days it takes for homes to have their final Resource Consent inspection signed off after the builds are completed, and the backlog of homes that have been waiting for sign-off for more than a year.
RNZ has also requested how many non-compliance with resource consent notices the council has issued for new builds this year.
The Auckland Council declined the request after more than 20 working days, saying it could not provide the information without substantial collation.
It also declined when RNZ asked if any figures could be provided to show the extent of the backlog of unclosed consents on sold homes.
“Developers hold the responsibility for closing out resource consents, so the council does not track this process, and is not required to,” Laulala said in a statement.
Laulala said they would continue to talk to developers and the real estate industry about the issues.
Northwest Auckland MP Chris Penk said the problem with unclosed resource consents had been a long-standing area of difficulty.
Penk said he hoped the council could be more accommodating towards home owners, in terms of the consent requirements and timelines.
“If there are ways they can find to be pragmatic, and not impose strict deadlines in accordance with the current law, then that will give people breathing space until we can sort out this whole area,” he said.
Penk said the council needed to be wary of the irresponsible developers.
“The sooner that we can crack down on them from a regulatory point of view, but also in terms of council, you know, being suitably cautious about approving any further applications, the better off everyone will be, including the good operators in the system at the moment,” he said.
Resource Management Minister Chris Bishop said he could not comment on the experience of the Kumeū owners, as these were “private sales agreements”.
When asked if he would consider making changes to the RMA to put more pressure on developers to close resource consents before they sell, he said work to replace the Resource Management Act 1991 would tend to have a greater focus on compliance and enforcement.
– RNZ