Nick and Rebecca Selvathesan say their Auckland newbuild home's backyard floods every time it rains.
Nick and Rebecca Selvathesan say their Auckland newbuild home's backyard floods every time it rains.
A young Auckland couple, whose newbuild property floods every time it rains, fear some builders are putting profits ahead of buyers by continuing to build in flood-prone areas.
Nick and Rebecca Selvathesan’s Mt Wellington home on Penrose Rd is less than a year old, yet their backyard has been unusable most of that time, they say.
“Every time there’s any sort of rain or drizzle whatsoever, the entire backyard on one side of the house completely floods and... it takes days, if not weeks, to actually drain,” Nick Selvathesan said.
The first-home buyers say it’s been a “nightmare” trying to get the issue fixed even though their two-storey townhouse is within the Building Act’s 12-month defect repair guarantee.
Builder Precise Homes said it feels sorry for the Selvathesans but that the home complies with Auckland Council building rules.
It blamed the flooding on Auckland’s recent, historically-high rainfall and the fact the home is in a “known overland flow path”.
Flooding has become a major political issue since massive January and February downpours swamped the Auckland, Tairāwhiti Gisborne and Hawke’s Bay regions, causing billions in damage.
Auckland councillors last month voted to jointly stump up $2 billion with the Government for flood prevention works and the buy-back of homes deemed unliveable because they are at risk of future flooding.
Selvathesan said, in his opinion, developers should also be unable to build in a “known flood path” and then wash their hands of the issue afterwards.
He said when newbuild homes are advertised with backyards, buyers rightfully expect to be able to use the backyards they pay for.
However, his yard - that is currently being tenanted while he and his wife spend a year working in Canada before returning to their jobs at Starship Hospital - has been a muddy pit, constantly pooled with water, that has often made it near impossible to dry the laundry, he said.
Nick and Rebecca Selvathesan’s Mt Wellington home on Penrose Rd is less than a year old, yet their backyard has been unusable most of that time, they say.
Selvathesan also worries whether the constant pooling will cause long-term water damage to his home and its foundations.
He said he and his wife signed up to buy the house in June 2020, marking what should have been a happy and momentous period as they also tied the knot shortly after.
The home then missed its promised 2021 completion date due to Covid delays, which Selvathesan said was “understandable”.
However, he claimed the process with Precise Homes has never been smooth, claiming they have often been “dragging their heels” when it came to fixing a series of smaller issues.
He said one issue was with wastewater spilling out over the property because pipes around the house had become blocked.
Precise Homes at first denied there was a problem, Selvathesan claimed, saying it was only when the couple called in an independent contractor to investigate that it was found gravel and building material from the home’s construction was causing the blockages.
“So once we proved it to them, they finally actually agreed to fix it,” he said.
Then after February’s floods caused more flooding, Precise Homes agreed to put in another drainage system.
But that has also failed to solve the problem, Selvathesan said.
Since then, the company has stopped communicating with him, he said.
Jimmy Sun, the marketing manager with Precise Homes, said his team has “done everything we can to assist” the Selvathesans.
“We really feel for anyone... who has had to deal with pooling of water overflow in their backyard because of the excessive rainfall in Auckland,” Sun said.
He said the Auckland Council had granted his development a Code Compliance Certificate and that all the company’s projects comply with the Building Act and the Building Code.
The drainage and wastewater system “is also fully compliant”, with Precise Homes paying a chartered professional engineer from CSE Consultants to oversee it, he said.
“But due to the site being on a known overland flow path, it can be subjected to flooding during heavy rainfalls,” Sun said.
“In dry weather, there are no problems at this property but obviously Auckland has been experiencing record amounts of rainfall this year.”
Sun said that months of rain had saturated the ground, meaning “flooding and pooling of water can happen even with lower rainfall amounts”.
He said “as a gesture of goodwill”, Precise Homes “installed an extra cesspit for them at no extra cost”.
“We have gone above and beyond what is required of us as a developer, and it is unfortunate that even with a new cesspit, Mr Selvathesan is still experiencing pooling of water in his backyard,” Sun said.
Selvathesan, meanwhile, said the stress continues to mount.
Not only is he being forced to try to deal with the issues from overseas, but he also spent much of a recent trip home to attend his father’s funeral also trying to get answers from Precise Homes on behalf of unhappy tenants, he said.
That’s led him to speak out so others do “not end up in our situation where we have a new home which floods every time it rains”, Selvathesan said.
Ben Leahy is an Auckland-based journalist covering property. He has worked as a journalist for more than a decade in India, Australia and New Zealand.
