Off-plan apartment investors try to bail from looming deadline

Nine units are being advertised in the Sugartree apartment complex. Photo/Jason Oxenham

Nine apartments worth about $6 million in Auckland's giant Sugartree apartment project are being quietly promoted for sale, as buyers who put down 10 per cent deposits try to sell before settlement next month.

Martin Dunn of City Sales said his company had sent out information to 35,000 potential buyers on his company's database and he was confident the places would sell.

"We can't advertise them [widely] due to an agreement with Sugartree," Dunn told the Herald this morning.

"These are tail-enders needing to assign agreements. It's most unusual. Their personal circumstances have changed but they have to settle at the end of next month," he said of looming settlement periods.

Many of the vendors were from Christchurch he said, "and I suspect they attended seminars. There are a lot of those around".

Dunn said the apartments had been pre-sold for $560,000 to around $800,000 each and eight people owned them.

"One is a deceased estate. Another bought another unit elsewhere and has had trouble. Their personal circumstances have changed," he said of the buyers who put down deposits more than a year ago.

"They're eight different vendors who have come to us independently."

City Sales' email says the apartments include a 1-bedroom 57.4sq m unit with a study and a 2-bedroom 75.6sq m unit with two bathrooms, a balcony and a carpark.

All the units being sold are in the Centro stage of Sugartree where around 500 units are being built. The development is at the top end of Nelson St and Union St near Spaghetti Junction.

Darren Brown, Sugartree's managing director, said the sales were nothing to do with his business which is developing the project of 690 units.

"We've sold all the apartments in Centro. It looks like a handful of purchasers who bought off the plans a couple of years ago may no longer be in position to settle," he said.

"We're talking about 2 to 3 per cent, it's not a large number here.

"Lending rules have tightened and someone may have signed up to buy something off the plans. Buyers may have been in a position to purchase a couple of years prior but now that the rules have changed, it's put some of them in a difficult position."