Photo: RNZ
A property investor still waiting to take possession of a property he bought at mortgagee sale and settled on a month ago is a reminder that these deals are often not straightforward, a property investment coach says.
The property investor - Matthew, who did not want to be identified - bought the property, containing two homes, near Wellington's airport on 29 November.
He said the contract initially gave a settlement date of 13 December, but he asked for that to be adjusted so the occupant would not have to leave before Christmas and instead could stay until the end of January.
Settlement was meant to happen on 23 January, but the woman refused to leave.
Matthew said he sent her a text to offer his condolences on the sale and let her know when she would need to move out.
"And she proceeded to ring me up and abused me, and stated that I'd murdered her son and that I'd stolen her property, and I was part of the theft and those sorts of things.
"I finally managed to get hold of her just before Wellington anniversary weekend, and she agreed to meet for a cup of coffee… but then she disappeared, and I couldn't find her, so I ended up going around to her property on the Tuesday, which is two days prior to settlement.
"She was actually lovely when I first met her, had 90 minutes there, she showed me through both properties.
"She was very cordial… I said, look, if you want to stay on, I don't object to you staying on, and I can probably offer you a tenancy at well below market value. So we just would need to agree on a rent.
"And she said, 'I don't want to talk about words like rent'. And I said, 'well, we've got to talk about some stage, because I'm settling in in two days' time'. And she said, 'that's your problem, effectively'.
"Next day, she rang me up and absolutely abused me and said that I'd broken into a house ... , and that I was a plunderer of New Zealand property, and that I was to stay away."
Matthew said she had been in the house since 1982 and had received more than $300,000 from the sale, once the mortgage was repaid.
The property sold for $770,000, but the woman argued it was worth $3 million. Its 2024 council rateable value is listed as $1.25m.
The property has now been decorated with signs objecting to the process.
The Tenancy Tribunal had given him a possession order for the property, he said, and she had been issued with a trespass notice.
"Now I've got an eviction order, which I've paid $335 for from the district court, so a bailiff will, at some stage, go round and probably, unfortunately, physically remove her."
He had not been able to get insurance on the property.
"I've owned the property tomorrow, a whole month, I haven't had a cent in rent."
He said he could understand people who thought investors were "feeding off the vulnerable", but if he had not been bidding the price up, the property could have sold for even less.
Unexpected problems
Property investment coach Steve Goodey said mortgagee sales could lead to more problems than people might expect.
Properties often cannot be inspected before the sale and there are no guarantees that it will be easy to take over a home once it was bought.
Goodey said people were often attracted by the promise that a mortgagee sale property had to be sold on the day.
"And people get carried away and over bid or get emotionally attached. Then they find out that they are at liability from the drop of the hammer and they might have an issue getting it to be vacant which is never guaranteed."
He said in Matthew's case, he was likely to need to hold on to the previous owner's belongings if she abandoned them for six months.
In another case heard by the Tenancy Tribunal recently, someone whose house was sold under the Local Government Rating Act refused to move out because he said he had rented it to himself when he owned it.
In another, a landlord went to the tribunal asking for tenants to take on the cost of removing rubbish and belongings left behind at a property bought in a mortgagee sale.
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