Sir Ng¯atata Love’s house fails to sell at auction
A gated beachfront home at the centre of the illegal payment that brought down Sir Nga¯ tata Love has failed to sell at auction.
The Plimmerton house was put under the hammer in a bid to recover money for Love’s victims.
The top bid at the Harcourts Paraparaumu office auction yesterday was by a mystery phone bidder, whose final offer of $1,435,000 did not meet reserve.
The bid is being put before the official assignee to consider, which could take a few days.
The property has a rateable value of $1.87 million. Love and his former partner, Lorraine Skiffington, who died earlier this year, paid $1.8m for it in 2006.
Love was jailed in late 2016 after being found guilty of obtaining by deception funds that rightly belonged to the Wellington Tenths Trust.
Love was released from jail about the time of his 80th birthday in September. Skiffington died that same month, aged 59.
Her death came months after the High Court ordered that the couple’s former home be sold, in the face of mounting arrears on the house. According to a July court order, the mortgage on the property was about $1m, with arrears of about $96,000.
Assuming the house is sold, Westpac will be repaid the money it is owed, with the balance held by the Official Assignee, pending court proceedings to determine whether the remainder should be paid to Love’s victims.