The central Wellington apartment is located in a block at the end of the narrow Halleys Lane. Image / oneroof.co.nz
A court has decided the fate of a derelict Wellington penthouse with no owner, so that neighbours in its leaky, earthquake-damaged apartment block can sell up and move on.
The eighth-floor apartment at 6H Halley's Lane, Te Aro, has a rateable value of $1.3 million.
But a Ray White real estate representative described it as "simply airspace and of no real value at all".
It also didn't belong to anyone.
The company that built it and owned it, Daytona Developments, went bust and was placed in liquidation 11 years ago.
The liquidator hasn't had any involvement since 2016, the year that Daytona was removed from the Companies Register.
A mortgage lender cut their losses and "washed their hands" of the run-down apartment two years ago, according to a High Court judgment.
This placed the 172sq m penthouse in a legal limbo known as "bona vacantia", vested in the Crown but described by the Treasury as "ownerless".
Its uncertain status also meant that the owners of the other seven titles in the building – apartments 6A to 6G – were prevented from recouping some value from their own unit titles.
Daytona built the apartment block, converting it from an existing commercial building, in the early 1990s.
A decade on, it became apparent the building as a whole was leaky. This was later made worse by earthquake damage.
The owners collectively, represented by their Body Corporate, found that their individual units had become unsaleable.
A Colliers valuer looked at the top-floor apartment H and declared it as "impossible to remediate".
The owner of apartment 6D, Rhys Weyburne, told the High Court the only way he and the other owners could recoup some value was to sell the whole building to a developer for demolition or for a complete refurbishment.
He said, however, that the owners were "trapped" unless apartment H could be released from its legal limbo and vested in a party who could dispose of it.
Weyburne, through his company Picklepie Ltd, applied to the court for a vesting order placing Apartment H in Picklepie's ownership. The other owners supported him.
Justice Cheryl Gwyn made an order vesting ownership of Apartment H in Picklepie, unblocking a sale of the building to a developer, Gold Coast Property Ltd.
A former shareholder and director of Daytona, Bernard Brodie, provided a statutory declaration that he made no claim on unit H.
'He has disregarded our voice and continued with this divisive kaupapa.'