KEY POINTS:
The legality of a luxury seaside apartment block on the Coromandel Peninsula should be decided by the end of this month, following a hearing this week.
Eleven buyers of apartments in the First Light block in Whitianga believe the building has been badly built and want to get out of their purchase agreements.
The apartments are understood to have been sold for between $600,000 and $1.2 million and deposits of between $5000 and $160,000 paid.
In a joint action, the owners complained to the Department of Building and Housing, which issued a draft report last October confirming there were serious defects in the building.
The department proposed revoking the building's code of compliance, issued by the Thames Coromandel District Council, and requiring the council to order the developer, Marina Holdings, to fix the defects.
At the two-day department hearing in Auckland on Thursday and yesterday, Marina Holdings and the council challenged the department's findings.
A lawyer for Marina Holdings, Rod Thomas, said the proposed cancellation of the code of compliance had grave implications for the building industry.
Contractual obligations concerning settlement and occupancy flowed from the code being granted.
"There are huge implications for the industry that the chief executive gets this right," he said.
The company and the council maintained the council had reasonable grounds to issue the code of compliance and the building was safe for occupation.
Any defects were minor and could be fixed during the normal maintenance period.
A lawyer for the apartment owners, Tim Rainey, said there were significant departures from the approved plans and there were subsequent questions over whether the apartments complied with the Building Code.
Determinations manager John Gardiner said the hearing was the longest that the department had held.
He expected to issue a final draft decision to the parties in a couple of weeks.
