Build blunder halts new home
Gail McDonald should be about to move into her brand-new house.
Instead, the Canterbury nurse has a bare section, an unwanted commute and rising legal fees.
McDonald’s house has not been built because the property next door was mistakenly built across her boundary.
Her problems started last year after she bought a house and land package from Golden Homes in Fulton Hogan’s Rosemerryn subdivision in Lincoln, near Christchurch.
Her house was due to be ready in May. In December last year, with construction about to start, Golden Homes discovered the house next door, being built by another builder, was in the wrong place.
It was built right up against the boundary, with the roofline protruding over McDonald’s property, despite having been inspected and signed off by Selwyn District Council.
McDonald was not told of the mistake until January. It meant the two homes would be closer than legally allowed.
‘‘What was an exciting time had just turned into a nightmare,’’ she said.
Golden Homes offered McDonald a full refund or another section, but she chose their option of a reworked house plan.
It would mean losing 45 square metres of her 528sqm site in a boundary shift, with the house redesigned to fit the reduced space, but she likes her section.
‘‘It’s in a perfect spot,’’ she said, ‘‘Everything about it felt as though it belonged to me.’’
‘‘It’s quiet, it’s private and I’m a night shift worker. There’s a little park right at the end of the street and my son is building nearby.’’
Months on from choosing the reworked plan, and with lawyers trying to sort liability and compensation, McDonald remains in limbo. The option of choosing another section has now disappeared, as they are all sold.
Meanwhile, she is renting in Leeston after selling her previous home to fund her section and house deposit, and is commuting to her job nursing at a mental health unit in Christchurch.
At 63 and nearing retirement, she has had enough.
‘‘This is meant to be my
forever home. The rent is dead money. At this stage of my life I cannot afford this. And I haven’t got years to fight it.’’
Selwyn District Council has not yet replied to questions from The Press about whether or not it knew about the construction breach, could have issued a stop-work notice on the neighbour’s build, or accepts liability for what went wrong.
Dean McGuigan, owner of Golden Homes in Christchurch, said it was the first time they had encountered the problem. Builders knew to check exact locations and not rely on fences or survey pegs, he said.
‘‘It’s not our fault ... but we picked it up when the other house was 50 per cent built. What do we do? This is unprecedented territory and we don’t want to make a mistake for Gail.’’
McGuigan said the revised house plan and boundary line were ‘‘ready to go’’.
However, they have not yet notified the council, the subdivision developer, or the neighbour about the necessary boundary shift. McGuigan said they were waiting to hear back from the lawyer of the neighbour’s builder, whom they had approached seeking compensation for redrawing the plans, McDonald’s loss of land, and legal costs.
He said both Golden Homes and McDonald were ‘‘the meat in the sandwich’’.
Their offer of a full refund remained, he said.
While McDonald bought her section as a house and land package, her nextdoor neighbour with the house in the wrong place bought her section directly from Fulton Hogan.
The neighbour said the situation was ‘‘extremely stressful’’ and ‘‘hideous for both parties’’.
She said she became aware of the error at the time Golden Homes detected it in December when her house was ‘‘already at the gib stage’’. She said the property had had ‘‘four or five inspections’’ from the council.
She said she had not been approached about shifting the boundary. ‘‘I am completely in the dark. It’s going through the lawyers, but not my lawyers. It’s in mediation. This is totally out of my control.’’
In the meantime, McDonald is wavering: trying to decide whether to fight to have her house built on her land, or to start again somewhere else.
‘‘I keep wondering why is this happening to me,’’ she said.