left a ghost town around Hayfield Way<\/a> with streets and footpaths laid, lamp posts erected but no houses.<\/p>\nBrendon Verhoeff, director of engineering consultants Maven Associates, said the original developers had laid the first main water pipe.<\/p>\n
But when they were \u201cforced to go under\u201d, the second back-up line remained unbuilt.<\/p>\n
It was needed as a backup supply, especially for emergencies such as a fire.<\/p>\n
Without it, water supply authority Veolia refused to give final consent to the subdivision.<\/p>\n
![\"The]()
The Karaka development on Hayfield Way was among a series of developments that stalled in 2019.<\/p>\n
Many home buyers, who had signed to purchase homes off the plans, were left in limbo, with construction of promised houses put off indefinitely.<\/p>\n
Eventually, Fu stepped up.<\/p>\n
Maven engineers had to design a new route for the backup supply, bringing it 3km from the existing connections in an undertaking that took more than a year.<\/p>\n
Verhoeff estimated the fix solved the water issue for \u201cpretty much the entire peninsula\u201d and all surrounding housing developments, unlocking the potential for another 5000 homes.<\/p>\n
But it was unlikely to leave Fu with much profit.<\/p>\n
\u201cDevelopers work on a 10% or 15% margin and having to pay for [the public pipes] was a fair bit of their profits,\u201d Verhoeff said.<\/p>\n
![\"Millan]()
Millan Arora had expected to be living in his Karaka home in 2022 but instead the land sat bare and empty. Photo \/ Brett Phibbs<\/p>\n
Fu said the situation put him under pressure.<\/p>\n
His project faced impending sunset clauses that would have allowed those who pre-bought land to pull out of purchases.<\/p>\n
Facing the loss of millions in sales, Fu couldn\u2019t wait for his neighbours to pay their share, he said.<\/p>\n
However, his intervention came too late for home buyers in other nearby developments.<\/p>\n
Milan Arora told the Herald in 2022 he had signed on to buy in one of the original projects that collapsed along Hayfield Way.<\/p>\n
Delays in land division consents linked to the water issue meant he was unable to start building on his site.<\/p>\n
Building costs were estimated to have jumped by $300,000 because of the delays, he said at the time.<\/p>\n
![\"Jing]()
Jing Zhang’s home had already been built as a showroom but she couldn’t take ownership because the final water consents hadn’t been issued. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Jing Zhang was another affected buyer. <\/p>\n
After posing for photos outside her finished, waterless home in 2021, she eventually \u201cbacked out\u201d of the deal three years ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just can\u2019t drag on forever,\u201d she said this week.<\/p>\n
Zhang said she reached a \u201cmutual agreement\u201d with her home builder in which she was repaid her deposit.<\/p>\n
The delays forced her family to buy a new property at a significantly higher price.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, we had to take the hit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fu admitted he was a selfish saviour because he did it to save his 250-home subdivision with its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192646,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[119900,51,13849,20388,29414,3597,6800,3339,91125,661,4380,117,111,139,69,90,6046,3263,18560,1240,8262,22139,213,19862,31871,376],"class_list":["post-192645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-119900","tag-auckland","tag-citys","tag-connection","tag-developer","tag-fix","tag-homes","tag-housing","tag-karaka","tag-major","tag-millions","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-potential","tag-project","tag-rescued","tag-south","tag-spending","tag-spends","tag-sports","tag-supply","tag-unlocking","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192645"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192645\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}