Neighbours at war
High Court battle over ‘boxy’ house design
“My concerns have never been about the money, but preserving the land and the environment.”
Andrea Waddell
A $4 million home being built by a former Black Cap in an affluent Hamilton suburb may need to be re-designed mid-construction, depending on the outcome of a court battle between neighbours.
On one side of the fence in the three-day hearing – now under way in the High Court at Hamilton – are cricketer-turned-supermarket owner Matthew Hart and his wife Sheree.
On the other side is Andrea Waddell, who sold the Harts a 11,300sq m section in March 2022.
The property at 420A Pencarrow Rd in Tamahere – valued at $1.2m on homes. co.nz – was part of a family farm bought by Waddell’s parents in 1978. She now lives in the now-renovated farmhouse that sits immediately behind where the new house is being built.
As part of the deal, Waddell included a covenant that asserted her right to approve the design of whatever home was built on the land.
The Harts’ home did not meet her approval because the design they had chosen – based on a winning design in the 2021 Master Builders Home of the Year awards – was, in her view, too “boxy“and thus out of step with the surrounding rural environment.
On the hearing’s first day yesterday, lawyer Phillip Cornegé, representing Waddell in court, laid out the case as she saw it – followed by some at-times tearful evidence from Waddell herself.
She had not wanted to sell the section, but had found herself under “significant financial pressure” following the end of her marriage.
Waddell said the sale itself was also a process she felt was rushed and was, she understood, driven by Sheree Hart’s belief in numerology to reach a settlement on a particular date.
At the time, Waddell had a conversation with the real estate agent involved in the deal in which she made it clear she did not like boxy homes and did not want one next door. Her right to object to the design was included in an information pack for prospective buyers at the time the section was on the market.
But a crucial point of contention in the case was whether she subsequently may have inadvertently given an indication of tacit approval for the Harts to go ahead with the build, thanks to an allegedly off-the-cuff remark that may have been taken seriously.
During that conversation in May, 2022 she told the couple she was relaxed about their plans “as long as they did not build a pink palace”.
The remark, she told the court, had actually been made in jest.
When the design plans were emailed to her in July of that year, she did not like what she saw – “a series of interconnected boxes”.
Cornegé said Waddell had emailed back that day to say the design “did not sit well with them”.
A further exchange of emails followed. Meetings were arranged, but had to be abandoned after Waddell came down with Covid. The Harts submitted a modified house design that she also disapproved of.
However, whether she explicitly made that view clear to the Harts is also unclear. They sought and obtained consent from the Waikato District Council and later began forging ahead with the construction.
The impasse between the neighbours was referred to their respective lawyers after the Harts sent Waddell their plans for the colour palette of the new build for her approval.
During the ongoing legal to-ing and fro-ing, the Harts made an offer of a $20,000 settlement to resolve the matter, which Waddell rejected.
“My concerns have never been about the money, but preserving the land and the environment around my home,” she said.
The Harts’ lawyer Toby Braun also made a brief opening statement to the court, in which he said Waddell’s concerns were purely subjective. She was also being unreasonable by withholding her consent and the apparent simplicity of the covenant “was clouded by the factual matrix” of what had happened.
The hearing, before Justice Michael Robinson, continues.