It’s important to know that your home’s ownership structure does not affect eligibility for the storm recovery programme. If your home is a duplex, townhouse, apartment, unit, or shares land with a neighbour under a ‘cross-lease’ you are eligible for the categorisation process, regardless of the neighbouring units’ ownership or whether they have opted-in.
Read some of the questions and answers we’ve collated on this topic:
Will cross-leased properties be categorised on a property level, or on an individual dwelling level, and if the latter, how would the buy-out process work?
Decisions about cross-lease properties will depend on how flooding and/or landslip affected the property and whether all affected owners have opted into the assessment process. We will make category decisions on a case-by-case basis.
My home is a duplex and the attached is government owned and they're not part of the categorisation process, how does this impact my categorisation if at all?
This doesn’t impact your eligibility or categorisation – we will assess and categorise your property regardless. Kāinga Ora is running its own process to assess and repair or remove homes.
If one unit in a multi-unit dwelling is Category 3, would the council automatically assign Category 3 to all units in the dwelling? Or could there be a situation where another unit is 2P?
All units in a multi-unit dwelling are assessed individually, not as a single block. This means that the owner of each unit will have to register for categorisation if they want to receive a category for their property.
Auckland Council doesn’t automatically assign categories based on what may have already been confirmed for neighbouring units. A detailed risk assessment is required for each unit in order to get a category. It may be that, following individual risk assessments, the same category is assigned to multiple units within a development. It’s also possible that there will be different category outcomes for different properties within a development, and that is why site-by-site assessments are required.
If the owner of a unit in a multi-unit dwelling is Category 3 but decides not to proceed with the buy-out, will that impact the category given to the units around them?
No, it will not. It is up to each individual property owner to make decisions based on their individual situation. One owner’s decision to opt-in (or not) will not affect the position of another property owner.
If one property owner in a multi-unit dwelling decides to dispute their category, will this impact the category given to the units around them?
No, it will not. One property owner disputing their category will not impact another property owner’s category.
