EQC sure retrorepair fund will be sufficient

CHRISTCHURCH: The Earthquake Commission (EQC) is confident it has enough money to retrorepair earthquakedamaged Christchurch properties, despite receiving almost six times the number of applications it initially expected.

Last year, the Government announced a $300 million package to address onsolds — properties bought after the Canterbury earthquakes by unsuspecting owners who later found undiscovered earthquake damage.

If repairs exceeded a $115,000 EQC cap, homeowners were left having to dip into their own pockets to cover the repairs.

The deadline for applications to access the $300 million fund was midnight on Wednesday.

EQC head of onsolds Pip Andrews said about 5700 applications had been received, although final paper applications were still being sorted. When the programme launched, EQC thought there might be 1000 applications.

‘‘It’s quite a large number of applications,’’ Ms Andrews said.

‘‘In the last week, EQC received about 1500 applications . . . It’s been a big couple of weeks.’’

Those applications would be triaged over the coming two months.

In September, Ms Andrews said the cost for repairing the properties on applications it had received, 2700 at that point, would be about $250 million.

She was confident there was enough money to repair the homes of those who applied.

‘‘We’re hoping by the end of the month we’ll have a really clear picture of what that looks like, but I’m not particularly concerned that number is going to grow exponentially,’’ she said.

‘‘That’s because for the vast majority of these applications, they are not going to exceed [what EQC can already pay in] the EQC Act and therefore most people won’t require the Crown funds to be drawn down at all.

‘‘While it seems like a really big number . . . actually the number that will go through and receive Crown funds is quite significantly smaller than that.’’

Many of the applications were to repair undiscovered damage to foundations, repairs that were often costly and, in some cases, made worse by botched attempts by EQC to fix them in the past.

New applications for the fund would not be received. — The New Zealand Herald