A court has forced the sale of a house in South Auckland that has holes in the walls and ceilings and most likely leaks.
The owners of the three-bedroom, one-bathroom weatherboard home at 31B Short Street, in Papakura, split about 10 years ago and have been unable to come to an agreement on the house so a judge has stepped in and ordered it be sold.
Harcourts listing agent Alex Dunn said the vendor they are working with lives out of town and just wants the property sold so she could move on.
The vendor's ex had been living in the property until the judge made a ruling that the property should be sold. The ex was evicted five weeks ago.
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Dunn said the property was in a “really rough condition”, had not been well maintained and prior to the listing the home had been full of rubbish.
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“We’ve taken five skip bins of stuff away. The house is in poor condition. It’s got holes in the wall. there are holes in the ceiling. Most likely some leaks from what we can see.”
He expected it to suit a developer, property trader or investor after a bargain and who was willing to bring it up to healthy homes standard and land bank the 382sqm section.
The house has a CV of $630,000, but Dunn said: “I think it’s going to sell well, well below that.”
“It’s definitely going to sell at auction day, we are pretty confident about that,” he said.
“At the end of the day the court doesn’t want to be hanging on to properties for however long, they need it gone as per their orders.”
It was his understanding that once the property is sold, the owners would then split the profit.
The property last changed hands in July 2010 for $235,000, OneRoof property records show.
The house is in poor condition, but agents are confident it will sell under the hammer. Photo / Supplied
Dunn is aware of several more court-ordered sales coming up because of domestic disputes.
Divorce lawyer Jeremy Sutton said a court-ordered sale would be a “last resort situation” where one party is occupying the property and refuses to move out.
“That is the party in occupation refuses to cooperate - the other party may need to ask them to be removed from the property so that a sale can occur.”
These types of forced sales are uncommon, he said, and in most cases the parties end up agreeing without having the court intervene in relation to a sale because of the length of time and cost of getting a court order. It usually takes on average nine to 12 months or longer to get a court order through the Family Court.
“It is most likely to occur in a very toxic relationship that has come to an end.”
However, he said the rising interest rates may make it harder for the parties to cover the mortgage payments particularly if one is not living in the house and could see the number of these types of cases increase. The owner still living in the property could also be more reluctant to move out of the marital property when faced with having to find and pay for a rental property in the current market.
For orders for sale to happen in the Family Court they must relate to relationship property, whereas the High Court would precede over orders for sale where the property is jointly-owned and this could include brothers who have fallen out or acquaintances.
Last month a four-bedroom townhouse in Auckland's Onehunga sold under the hammer for $71,000 as part of a high court-ordered auction. It followed the sale of another townhouse in the same block that sold for $70,000. The leasehold property was offered up for auction by Auckland’s deputy sheriff, acting on behalf of a high court judgment for Bracken Trustees No1.
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