Man Told He Has to Move His House by Three Feet or Pay $315,000
A small error made by a construction company may lead to major losses for one New Zealand man.
Deepak Lal, a homeowner in Auckland, is in legal trouble after his new home was discovered to be three feet over his property line. The construction error means his home is partially built on his neighbor's land and the subsequent fine could cost him NZ $315,000 ( approximately USD $227,363), reported the NZ Herald.
Reportedly, Lal hired Pinnacle Homes, an Auckland and Waikato-based construction company specializing in residential work, to design and construct his three-bedroom house in Papakura.
The house was nearly completed by mid-2020, according to NZ Herald, before unfortunate news broke of a "boundary mix-up". The three-foot difference brought construction to a grinding halt in August.
"It's a nightmare for me. I wake up in the middle of the night and think 'how am I going to solve this?'" Lal told NZ Herald.
The neighboring property, which is owned by C94 Development, according to NZ Herald, wants Lal to either move his house or pay NZ $315,000 in damages. They are reportedly taking legal action against Lal.
Johnny Bhatti, Pinnacle Homes's project manager, found the building consent error when checking the documents for the house.
"The first person I called was the surveyor. But he had actually marked the house in the right place according to the building consent," Bhatti told NZ Herald. "I notified Mr. Lal and that's when everything stopped."
Pinnacle Homes had consulted another company, HQ Designs, to develop "the plans and file the building consent for the house." Bhatti told NZ Herald that "the fault for the boundary dispute rests with HQ Designs and the council."
However, according to the house owner, Lal, HQ Designs architectural designer Nitin Kumar "filed the building consent and Auckland Council approved it. The council is ultimately responsible."
The blame game doesn't end here.
Lal's lawyer Matt Taylor wrote to Pinnacle Homes and HQ Designs in September 2020, as per NZ Herald, and said: "It seems likely that the issue has arisen as a result of an error made at the design stage likely to have occurred when the resource consent information was transferred by the designer to the plans submitted for building consent."
Moving the house back to correct boundary lines would cost about $150,000 and Bhatti is "willing to help" but he said that there is a need to "negotiate who's going to pay for it."
"The council checked everything and approved the building consent. But the council didn't cross-check that it was supposed to be one meter within the boundary," he added.
Kumar told NZ Herald that he asked the building council to cross-check the site against the resource consent.
"I clearly noted it in the building consent and said they needed to read it in conjunction with the resource consent. It's the council's responsibility to check it," Kumar said.
C94 Development spokesman Bruce Wang acknowledged the situation to be unfortunate but, according to NZ Herald, has no interest in knowing the culprit.
"I think in the end the other parties have to provide a solution because it's preventing us from selling the property," Wang told NZ Herald. "If it's not settled the liability will keep accruing month by month and that's up to the other parties to find out what went wrong. I have no idea what's going on."
Lal, caught between the center of the paperwork error, had to pick between two expensive outs and moving the house turned out to be the cheaper option.
"Everyone seems to be blaming someone else," he told NZ Herald, "I'm already paying $1000 a week for the mortgage on this house and the rent for the other place where I'm living."
An Auckland Council spokesperson is looking into the issue, NZ Herald confirmed.
