Tenant skipping – a new approach

Wednesday, May 18th 2011, 4:49PM

Forget pulling the rug out from someone, Westpac has gone one better and pulled the rug, floor, foundations, walls - the whole house in fact.

The bank took possession of a family home after they failed meet mortgage payments – by carrying the property off on the back of a truck.

They were told they had one hour to remove their belongings from the home they had lived in for 18 years before workmen arrived to chainsaw through the foundations and remove the house.

Westpac refused to comment on the repossession, citing the fact that the legal owner was the ex-wife of one of the homeowners and no longer resident in the property.

However, Aaron Sewell, who serves court documents on people, said that while taking boats and property for mortgagee sales was not unusual, such a literal repossession was a new one for him.

“I’ve never heard of that [taking a house] ever before,” he said.

Going from chalk to cheese – or more appropriately Prince to pauper – Westpac also featured in another property story this week.

The bank’s New Zealand boss George Frazis has vacated his exclusive Paritai Drive property in Auckland and reports suggested he may find himself before the Tenancy Tribunal over allegations he broke a lease agreement and skipped out on $134,000 in rent.

The good news though for home hunters is that the rental is back on the market at just $3,400 a week.

No further details of the dispute between Frazis and the home’s owner, James Kirkpatrick, have been forthcoming, however the Landlord humbly suggests Kirkpatrick could follow the example of a fellow landlord in the UK in future. . .

Simon Everingham has taken a novel approach to stop his tenants skipping off with the GBP15,000 he says they owe him.

He hired ten skips and used them to block off access to his property.

He took the unusual step as American tenants Dan and Christina Herring planned to return to the States and he feared he would never get his money back if they left.

Previous attempts to block access to the property were thwarted when the Herrings employed friends to carry objects – including a piano – through a neighbouring field to a removal lorry, prompting Everingham to order an additional six skips and use mattresses and sofas to further hinder their efforts.

“This isn’t how we imagined our last year,” said Mrs Herring.

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