Body corporate chair Melanie Johnston said each owner will have to pay at least $180,000 if they decide to strengthen the building, although she suspected it will cost more as that estimate was a few years old.
No decisions have been made yet and the situation has left some owners feeling “trapped”, Johnston said.
So far the group has spent about $200,000 on the likes of lawyers, project managers and engineers to develop a proposed strengthening solution of getting the building to 67 per cent NBS.
The group has also got to the point where it thinks everyone could access money to do the work either through the bank or a new Kāinga Ora scheme offering low-interest deferred repayment loans.
“That’s taken a big barrier away from us because we did think that we had owners who would probably struggle to get retail bank financing due to their circumstances,” Johnston said.
Regardless, Johnston said it was still a dilemma.
“Do we push the go button knowing we are basically committing our entire owner group to a $180,000 loss?”
Johnston said she was pleasantly surprised when the city council approached owners about potentially being part of the new support service pilot.
“What we would be hoping to get out of it is putting a real-life situation back in front of MBIE... and trying to get them to understand what the barriers are.”
MBIE building system assurance national manager Simon Thomas said the pilot will be operational by mid-2023.
It will provide free and independent legal, engineering and technical advice, as well as a facilitation service and wellbeing support for owners, Thomas said.
“The pilot will provide MBIE with much-needed information about the barriers people are facing to remediating on time and what kinds of government support will help them to overcome these barriers.”
The pilot will be subject to an evaluation after 12 months, which will consider issues such as whether different types of support helped building owners to progress their remediation plans, Thomas said.
“This information will inform MBIE’s options for how the service could be expanded to more building owners, including to other regions, its feasibility and the likely cost of doing so. Any option to expand and continue the service would be subject to funding being available.”
Overall, there are currently 595 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington, according to MBIE’s register.
The deadlines for strengthening these spike in 2027 when 200 notices will expire.
Wellington City Council spokesman Richard Maclean said the council was in regular contact with owners of these buildings to monitor progress and encourage them to meet their strengthening obligations.
“Council is very conscious of the number of notices that are due to expire and is putting in place processes to deal with these.”
Eight earthquake-prone building notices have already expired and MacLean said most had work under way to resolve the situation.
The council has however taken two of these cases to court in recent years.
