Challenge to council over property valuation fails

The Land Valuation Tribunal has dismissed a Waitakere man's claim that his property was wrongly valued for council rates because of a "stigma effect" of council warnings about potentially contaminated soil.

Judge John Hole said Hobsonville resident Jack Lovelock did not present adequate evidence that his property's value was lowered by the Waitakere City Council tagging a land information memorandum (LIM) report with the health warning.

However, the reasoning behind Mr Lovelock's objection could not be faulted, said Judge Hole.

"The council withheld information from its valuer to the effect that it was about to adversely note any LIM report applicable to the property," he said.

"That information had the potential of being relevant to the determination of the land value."

In 2004, the council contracted Quotable Value to revalue properties for rating purposes.

The valuations were based on market prices at September 2004, which was a year after the council decided to note LIM reports with warnings about possible soil contamination with pesticides and herbicides when it knew sites had been used for horticulture.

LIM notations were made a month after the revaluation but the judge said the council had information that had the potential to adversely affect land values.

The council did not inform Quotable Value that the report for Mr Lovelock's property had the soil contamination warning and did not tell Mr Lovelock.

Mr Lovelock said the council's failure to advise Quotable Value meant no adjustment was made to the land value to reflect a possible reduction in value.

"Quotable Value say there was no noticeable drop in values but they failed to consider the number of contracts that have collapsed because of the tagging.

"It's all in the eye of the beholder - a greenie will walk away from the property while other people might just say it's the crazy council, we'll ignore it."

The retired engineer said the former horticultural property was not contaminated.

He believed that the council should revise the valuations of 3000 properties given the LIM warning.

Council regulatory committee chairwoman Vanessa Nesson said she expected a manager's report on the judgment for the committee to consider a response.

She said there would be some sympathy for telling valuers about tagged properties before the next three-yearly revaluation.

Waitakere stood firm on its tagging policy when other city councils backed away after an outcry in late 2004 and 2005, when landowner's protested that it would scare off prospective buyers and devalue their properties.

Mrs Nesson said then that most LIM reports were issued to prospective buyers and they wanted tagging to stay.

The notice was telling a purchaser that, if they wished to develop a property known to have been an orchard, the council required the seller to undertake soil tests.