Photo: RNZ / Lucy XIa
Another group of West Auckland homeowners - including young families and a single mum - have been blindsided by the council telling them that front and backyards of their newbuilds do not meet resource consent requirements, more than a year after they purchased the homes.
Faced with a much delayed council inspection and a liquidated developer, owners say they have been unfairly left to pay thousands for the landscaping work that should've been done when the homes were sold.
Auckland Council said its environmental monitoring team was stretched and struggling to keep up with the increasing workload from housing intensification.
It was unable to tell RNZ how much backlog of sold properties with unclosed resource consents it was dealing with, after a declined OIA request and multiple follow ups.
Since RNZ's reporting on a group of new homeowners in Massey, who said they were misled into buying homes with unclosed resource consents, more homeowners in similar situations are speaking up.
Ten townhouses on Purapura Lane in a Kumeu development do not have the fences, or trees in the original resource consent plans. Where there was meant to be soil and plantings, there is concrete and live cables underneath.
The developer - Treasure North Limited - owes more than $1.6 million to creditors, and RNZ has not been able to reach them after an unsucce
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