Builder Sells Multimillion Dollar Land to Recover from Debt

New Zealand Business

News

By Jason Duop / 2 January 2016

The housing crisis isn’t just hitting home buyers. A Hamilton building company has been ordered to sell $3.4 million of land by the High Court. All of this revenue will go straight to repaying debt.

New Settler Homes, directed by Lijun Zhang, borrowed a significant amount of money from Aucklander Xiaozhen Liu. And when the money wasn’t repaid in time, Liu didn’t hesitate in taking the company to court. Here a sherif’s sale was placed to sell 11 of the company’s sections.

The 11 sections were auctioned at a packed Lugton’s Real Estate office, and went for a combined total of close to $3.4m.

The sections up for grabs ranged from 400 metre square parcels in Pukete, to a 5000sqm lot in Tamahere, and included two Matamata land parcels. All up just over 1.3 hectares of land in Hamilton and Matamata was sold.

The hottest section, an 860 sqm plot in Lake Domain Dr, fetched $688,000, with land in Matamata taking the lowest price, at $120,000 for almost 1700 sqm.

According to Companies Office records, New Settler Homes started in 2010. New Zealand Gazette records show that there have been three applications for the company to be placed into liquidation. In 2012, PwC liquidators David Blanchett and Colin McCloy applied to have New Settler Homes placed into liquidation. This was followed by an application from Carters in January this year, and one from Inland Revenue in March.

Gazette records also show four public notifications that the company would be removed from the register, with one notice each year since 2012.

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