The owner of one of about 30 apartments in the four storeyed-building and member of the body corporate, Kathy Ross, told the Herald the cracks were discovered during routine repairs.
"I was seeing to some repairs on the ground floor and had all the right people, an engineer and a specialist in to assess the repairs and the engineer informed the council."
She said the damage was not bad and believed the situation had been "dramatised".
"They said we had to get out of the building and weren't allowed back in until it had been repaired. This is a building I have been living in for two years and so I am not very happy because the repairs were scheduled for this month and were all going to plan until a few people got very excited.
"I'm a bit cheesed off we had to move out, it was my home and it just feels like everyone is trying to cover their backs in case there was some freak earthquake in Auckland that would change it into another CTV building or something."
Mr McCormick said building evacuations happened "from time to time" but were usually due to subsidence after heavy rain, or for sanitation reasons if sewage or plumbing pipes were damaged.
Michelle Nand, 24, has lived in the building since February with her partner.
"I was at home the whole time, but when my partner arrived home the building manager was at the door and said you need to evacuate because the foundations were unstable," she said.
Security guards manned the building last night and residents would be informed of the building's situation.
The building was built in the early 1900s and was converted to apartments in 1995.
