KEY POINTS:
More than 30 investors who bought residential properties through finance specialist Blue Chip are backing calls for a public forum to discuss their problems.
Auckland investor Greta Norman wants to organise a rally for investors who are unhappy about their situation and she said yesterday morning she had received more than 30 emails from people who had a wide range of problems.
They complained about long delays in getting properties after paying deposits, extensive rental arrears, interest payment arrears on money paid for properties not yet settled, weathertightness issues in apartments and townhouses and lack of code compliance certificates with some properties.
Those investors wanted to unite to discuss their options, Norman said. She is inviting investors to contact her at the email address gretabluechip@paradise.net.nz.
But Jonathan Knox, Blue Chip's communications chief, has this week defended Blue Chip in the face of criticism and said problems would be resolved "imminently which means instantaneously".
Rent payment issues were being sorted out after the company changed its business structure to a new franchise system, he said, estimating that only about 0.2 per cent of people were affected by this problem.
He described the rent delays as transactional issues and said these would soon be a thing of the past because the company had put in place a better system.
Hundreds of investors have bought more than 1000 residential properties through Blue Chip and its associates, which offer four-year rental payment guarantees and buy-back arrangements with attractive capital growth.
But last year a series of problems arose and investors complained.
Property specialist Olly Newland has also been working with a group of investors in the last few months but refused to say this week how much progress had been made. He is understood to be working with about 25 people.
Investors who contacted the Business Herald this week include:
* Norman and her husband, of Epsom, owed $6000 in rent on a $860,000 three-bedroom unit in Auckland.
* Kathy and Martin Faulkner, of Mt Maunganui, who said they might be forced to sell their family home if rental payments on two Auckland properties were not made soon.
* James Abbott, of Auckland, who says he is owed $2800 on his Eden Terrace apartment.
* Kirsti Hansen who wants to receive rent directly from tenants in her Auckland apartment after payment problems.
* Nicola Williamson whose late mother deposited money with the company for an apartment which she says was never settled.
