All Black sues over leaky home

Former first-five claims he wasn’t told house he bought from associates leaked – and he’s spent $250,000 fixing it. Steve Kilgallon reports.

Retired All Black Ian Dunn still drinks in the same pub as his former friends, real estate agents Ian Fairley, Keith ‘‘Chuck’’ Norris and Gary ‘‘Banza’i’ Boucher. But now they sit at opposite ends of the bar.

Dunn is suing Boucher and Tait Realty, the company the trio worked for, claiming they knowingly sold him a leaky home that so far has cost him $260,000 in repairs and another $40,000 in legal bills.

Dunn, who won three test caps in 1983, admits not doing much research when he bought Boucher’s own house eight years ago because he knew the men well. He co-owned race horses with Tait boss Fairley, and drank with them all at the pub he part owned, the Jovial Judge – which was two doors away from the Team Tait offices in Walton St, central Whanga¯ rei.

Boucher, a real estate agent of eight years whose promotional material says that ‘‘as a result of his honesty and integrity has been very successful’’ had also sold Dunn his previous house.

Dunn got a knockdown deal: Boucher had tried to sell the house himself for $600,000 two years earlier. When he had no luck, he enlisted Norris as his agent, who sold it to Dunn for just $420,000 in late 2011.

The Dunns moved into the house in Fairview Dr, marketed as a ‘very desirable residence… a warm family home’ offering ‘peace, privacy and panache’, in February 2012. Just a week later, Dunn says it began to leak.

He claims that while Norris suggested he claim on insurance, Fairley told him ‘‘we won’t walk away from this’’ and they agreed a four-way split of the $8400 repair bill between Dunn, Boucher, Fairley and the Tait company. Fairley denies making that comment to Dunn.

But later, the kitchen ceiling began to bow, then sprung a major leak. The builder who came to investigate, says Dunn, thought his house was worth only the value of the land it sat on.

Until then, he says, he had no idea he’d bought a leaky home. He claims Norris dissuaded him from having a LIM report and told him the house was sound, bar a couple of leaks after storms which had been repaired. Norris strenuously denies this.

Dunn says he ‘‘bit the bullet’’ and had most of the house re-clad in 2016, for more than $250,000. He claims tradies who worked on it said they knew the house had been repeatedly repaired for weathertightness issues.

He has a report from building consultant Phillip Crow, who found extensive evidence of leaking, and a statement from his builder Jonathan Youngs, who had a team of six working for six months on the repairs. Youngs thought ‘‘it was readily apparent… the house had been leaking for a number of years’’, and believed he had no alternative but a complete re-clad: he estimated 20 per cent of the framing and 85 per cent of the cladding was rotten.

Dunn has since discovered three sets of potential purchasers had withdrawn after getting unfavourable builder’s reports.

Not until discovery for the court case did he also learn of an inspection report from the Whanga¯ rei District Council, commissioned by Boucher, which said the house could have weathertightness issues.

The Field Advice Notice from August 2011 says Boucher had implied the house might be leaky, and the official, Kevin Richards,