Tiny housing firm leaves buyers in lurch
A tiny house building company folds and directors disappear, owing nearly $200,000 for unfinished homes. By Harrison Christian.
A young single mother is one of several customers out of pocket after a tiny house building company folded, owing at least $190,000 to people whose homes are uncompleted.
Thermasol, run by Sean and Tracy Kelly since 2016, went into liquidation last month with almost 90 creditors, including customers who paid the company to build tiny houses.
Three customers say the Kellys asked for payments shortly before the company was liquidated, and their tiny houses never amounted to anything more than a floor base.
The Kellys have not responded to requests for comment. When the Sunday Star-Times visited their $3.8 million rental in the upmarket Auckland suburb of Remuera this week, it had been vacated.
Asked about the Kellys, a neighbour said: ‘‘You want money do you? You want your money back?’’
The neighbour said the couple left in a hurry and a few people had been seeking them.
Krystal Smith, a 24-year-old mum, said she ordered a twobedroom cabin from Thermasol so she and her baby son could live in it on her parents’ property.
She paid the company about $60,000 in two instalments. The deposit was for a flat base, and the second payment was for the walls and windows.
A week before it was supposed to be delivered, she got an email saying the company was going into liquidation.
‘‘For a month or two before that they’d been quite sketchy and not really answering my emails,’’ Smith said.
Her father went to the company’s West Auckland factory to check on progress after they stopped replying.
He found the company had completed only the flat base for the cabin, she said.
‘‘It’s tough with money. I got a loan. Now I’m in even more debt . . . probably spend the rest of my life paying it off.
‘‘Basically I’m stuck living in a garage with my son.’’
A Northland man said he paid $60,000 for a tiny house – the second instalment about eight days before the company folded.
‘‘They asked me for the second instalment saying the floor was down (and) the walls were going up.
‘‘Sean was adjusting the design, Tracy was the one chasing the money.’’
At the company’s premises last week he found his tiny house was a ‘‘piece of wood on the ground’’.
‘‘It’s f ...... heartbreaking.’’ Ruth O’Brien, an Auckland midwife, paid the Kellys $70,000 to build her tiny house. She planned to put it on a section she bought in Waikato for her two adult children.
She paid her first deposit of $35,000 on October 1. Six weeks later she asked to see progress, and the Kellys agreed she could see it in a week to 10 days.
They asked her for a second instalment of $35,000 on the promise of installing walls and windows, and O’Brien paid it.
When O’Brien stopped hearing from the Kellys she drove to the West Auckland factory to check on progress.
On the way, she called the office and a voicemail said the company was in liquidation. It was eight days after she paid the second instalment.
‘‘I was in complete shock, complete panic, and thought, well that’s all I have. I can’t raise any more money – that’s it.’’
O’Brien’s friends have since set up a Givealittle page to help her recover from the financial hit.
Levi Aldridge, a builder and former employee of Thermasol, said he was owed $1400 in wages.
Aldridge said the Kellys were good people, but the company was run ‘‘very awkwardly’’. He believed it employed too many builders and struggled to give everyone a full day’s work.
Building materials often came
in late or when they did arrive, were the wrong product.
The Kellys never let on that the company was in trouble.
He was shocked when they sent a text saying there was no more work and he had to collect his tools the following morning.
‘‘They were in tears when I last saw them. Sean couldn’t even talk to us, he was just broken.’’
The liquidator, John Michael Gilbert, said in his first report he would investigate the actions of the directors, ‘‘particularly in continuing to trade the business once insolvency should have been obvious’’.
‘‘It is apparent that a number of people paid deposits and/or instalments in the last few weeks before I was appointed.’’
Gilbert didn’t respond to questions.
‘‘I was in complete shock, complete panic, and thought, well that’s all I have. I can’t raise any more money – that’s it.’’ Ruth O’Brien