Some houses taking part in the Earthquake Commission's on-sold programme have so much damage that it is more economical to build a new home.
File photo. Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
In 2019 the government announced home-owners who bought a damaged property without knowing so could apply for funds to help with botched repairs.
The commission received nearly 6000 applications for the on-sold programme, over 1300 have already been processed.
Head of the programme Pip Andrews said of those processed 518 settlement agreements have been reached and 722 applications were deemed ineligible.
"The biggest portion of those which didn't meet the criteria are because the claim was already over cap when the property was sold - so the original home owner had access to private insurance cover.
"So they may or may not have used the money they were paid out towards repairs," she said.
She said of the settled claims, 27 properties will be complete rebuilds rather than repairs.
"A lot of the damage we are coming across is from work done to foundations so it's not always visible on the surface - so yeah it works out more economical to build a new home."
Andrews said she expected there would be a handful of properties which would be rebuilt but said the number is low and she does not expect it to rise significantly when other applications are processed.
There is flexibility in the programme for co-funding a rebuild as well, so we are finding that even when a home is repairable some home owners want to build a new house, she said.
"We assess what the repairs would cost and then they can use that value towards a rebuild and the homeowner pays the difference."