Woman loses $200k after failing to settle property deal
A woman who went unconditional on the sale of a Kāpiti Coast property has learnt a costly lesson in the perils of failing to come through with the money.
The property was a lot in the planned Florian Kāpiti townhouse development at Paraparaumu.
Lots in the 64-townhouse development were listed for sale in May 2021. The owner of the property at the time, Macquarie Trustee Ltd, entered a sale and purchase agreement with Georgina Watson the following month.
The purchase price for the property was $833,000. A deposit of $83,800 was to be paid by June 16, 2021, with the balance being paid on the settlement date.
Watson paid the deposit and the agreement was unconditional from August 19, 2021. Work on the development got under way in March 2022.
Watson’s settlement date was June 20, 2023, but she failed to make the payment.
Macquarie issued a notice requiring Watson to settle by July 20 but, again, settlement did not occur.
A further urgent settlement request was made on August 1, but that also didn’t occur, so, on August 31, Macquarie entered into a new sale and purchase agreement with a new buyer, who purchased the property for $702,000. The agreement with Watson was cancelled.
In September last year, Macquarie took court action against Watson.
Macquarie’s sole director and shareholder Kurt Kerrison said the company had incurred a loss of $52,200, taking into account Watson’s deposit of $83,800, which it retained.
Kerrison said there were other costs incurred, including a $12,570 commission paid to a real estate agent, $6470.70 for marketing the resale, $10,456.01 for furnishing the property for resale, and $5072.17 for legal and council costs.
He also claimed $36,000 interest on the unpaid portion of the sale price, for the period in which settlement was not met.
The matter was heard by Associate Judge Andrew Skelton in the High Court at Wellington last month.
Watson was not represented in court. Skelton found Watson liable for damages resulting from her breach of contract in the total sum of $122,768.88.
That comes on top of the $83,800 deposit already paid, meaning the total cost of failing to meet settlement came to $206,568.88.
Watson could not be reached for comment.
First there were raised zebra crossings, at $150,000 a piece. Then there were “courtesy” crossings that weren’t, followed by go-slower speed humps and, in some places, speed cushions.
Wellington’s roads have become a traffic-calming engineer’s dream-scape, and nowhere more so than along the Glenmore St to south Karori corridor, where “vertical deflection devices” are being rolled out at pace.
Said one local on social media recently: “I think you can see them from space.”
“It is as though the local pre skool was let loose with a box of crayons down at the planning office ...” said another.
It’s an expensive box of crayons, and one that appears to have pedestrians and some at the Wellington City Council confused as to what exactly is being installed
Siobhan Procter, the council’s chief infrastructure officer, said about $150,000 was budgeted for each raised pedestrian crossing, depending on location and installation requirements, with traffic management sometimes chewing up half of that.
One recently installed near Marsden School cost around $178,000, and another at the southern end of Karori Rd was about $125,000.
The asphalt platforms have an expected 15-year life span, as opposed to 40 years for concrete ones.
Alongside the raised zebra crossings, a plethora of “road furniture” and other trafficslowing measures have been laid out across the route. These include rubber cycle lane “defenders”, speed humps, speed cushions and pedestrian platforms, which are also called courtesy crossings in some council documentation.
There is, however, a subtle difference between those last two, and one that could have dangerous consequences.
Huntleigh Home and Retirement Village is understood to be planning a party to celebrate the installation of what the council’s February update calls a raised “courtesy crossing” at the intersection of Karori Rd and Campbell St nearby.
However, the crossing in question is a pedestrian platform, as described in Waka Kotahi’s traffic control manual, not a courtesy crossing, as it sits flush with the kerb and is in the same material as the road surface, indicating pedestrians don’t have priority.
“On their own, they provide a focus for pedestrians to cross. However, pedestrians must still give way to vehicles,” the manual says.
A courtesy crossing’s colour and texture, on the other hand, should contrast with the road and footpath to indicate both users are “guests” over the crossing.
“Courtesy crossings are usually made of bricks or paving or raised above the level of the road. Courtesy crossings are intended to facilitate eye contact between pedestrians and drivers, resulting in a mutually negotiated position over who goes first.”
A visit to the site this week revealed confusion among users. Shalini Bahuguna and her daughter Janya Hindley-Bahuguna both thought the platform was a pedestrian crossing.
“It looks like a crossing, it feels like a crossing, so it must be a crossing,” Bahuguna said.
Another parent, Patrick Savage, said while it was an improvement on no platform, it was somewhat ambiguous for both pedestrians and motorists.
Madhu Choudhury felt safer than she had previously as there was no step down from the kerb. While she also thought it was a pedestrian crossing, she believed it had made drivers more conscious of pedestrians. “It was really hazardous before.”
Meanwhile, new speed humps and speed cushions have been installed on sections of both the main road and in some side streets.
In some instances the cushions are less than the width of a standard vehicle, which one critic reckoned “sort of defeats the purpose”.
The Karori Connections route is one of Wellington’s more dangerous transport routes.
From 2011 to 2022, there were 318 reported vehicle accidents along the route, with 36 involving cyclists and 19 pedestrians.
Half of all reported pedestrian crashes – where a pedestrian is hit by a motor vehicle – in Karori Rd happened at pedestrian crossings, which was why it was important to make them safer, Procter said.
The raised crossings were lower than normal to allow better access for large vehicles, including fire trucks and buses.
Auckland Transport has ripped up a raised pedestrian crossing installed last year following noise complaints.
“We understand there is noise associated with the deployment of raised crossings,” Procter said. “However, this is minimised as much as possible by using longer departure ramps where possible.
“Speed humps and raised crossings have been used for several years to successfully modify speed and while there have been issues with noise, this has been generally accepted to achieve a safer environment for all users.”
Procter said that since January, 46 trafficcalming features had been installed on the Karori Connections and Berhampore to Newtown projects.
Work on one of several raised crossings planned for Glenmore St is under way, while two more are planned for Karori Rd.