EQC Repaired House Sales Need Legal Clarification

Sale of all “EQC Repaired” Houses Should Be Banned Until Legal Matter Clarified

Any and all houses that have had EQC repairs should not be allowed to be sold until they are signed off as “complete and correctly repaired”.

An informal meeting between a number of EQC and private insurance claimants yesterday in Christchurch clearly indicates that there are serious unresolved legal issues with homes that have failed repairs, especially those that are then sold on.

Ali Jones, who has been advocating for faster Government action on this and other earthquake insurance matters, says with Christchurch being promoted as a great place to buy, particularly for first home owners, she is concerned the serious consequences of buying a property that is a real risk of being a failed or incomplete EQC repair, is not understood.

“There are hundreds possibly thousands of us who have huge mortgages, a botched repair and end up incurring large costs for lawyers and other professionals in order to prove our case,” she says. “We certainly can’t afford it so how on earth is a first home buyer going to?”

Jones says the added cost of dealing with a failed repair is not the only issue, there’s a huge amount of stress involved as well.

“EQC continues to do things as they always have – move at a snail’s pace, operate in silos with the left hand not knowing what the right is doing, unable to make decisions without going through several layers of bureaucracy, and relying on flawed damage assessments, and I would not want anyone having to go through this,” she says.

Jones adds that until a person owns a house, they cannot see the full EQC file and for most having problems now, the detail in that file would have raised serious concerns about a property, despite being assured all EQC repairs had been completed.

“Our file showed an original assessment of $800,000 worth of damage. EQC eventually decided on a figure of $52,500 to fix the damage. They excluded the foundation from proper repair and now our house is breaking and dropping as a result. If we had seen the EQC file and knew what had gone on, it would have raised some very serious flags for us,” she says.

If a property goes overcap with failed repairs, EQC is paying that $100,000 plus GST and then sending people to the insurer (unless that insurer is Southern Response as they have an MoU with them). The insurer is saying, sorry, this is an EQC issue as they botched the repair or didn’t repair the damage in the first place.

“This leaves people in limbo and until a court decides on the liability, we all just wait, in broken homes; almost 8 years after the quake.”

Ali Jones says until everyone is clear on where the liability lies and who should be paying to fix broken houses that EQC has not repaired properly, any house that was part of the Fletcher and EQC Canterbury Home Repair Programme (CHRP), should not be allowed to be sold.

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