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$85 Million to $240 Million: The Leaky Building Lesson Every Body Corporate Needs

NZ’s biggest leaky building bill has grown from $85 million to more than $240 million — and two owners just lost a High Court fight over $636,000 in unpaid levies.

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A High Court judge has just ordered two Auckland apartment owners to personally pay $636,000 in unpaid levies, on top of six-figure legal costs, after rejecting their claim that a council settlement had already closed the book on their weathertightness problems.

That’s the latest chapter at St Lukes Garden Apartments — New Zealand’s largest leaky building remediation. What started as an $85 million repair job now costs more than $240 million. Across the complex’s 285 units and 17 buildings, some owners face individual bills of up to $800,000.

This isn’t really a story about one unlucky building. It’s a case study in what happens when nobody plans, in real numbers, for what a building actually costs to maintain over its lifetime — and it holds a lesson for every body corporate, apartment buyer, and building consultant in the country.

The St Lukes Garden Apartments Case in 60 Seconds

  • The complex: 285 units across 17 buildings in Auckland, built 2003–2011
  • The leaks: First detected in August 2013
  • The original repair estimate: $85 million
  • The current bill: More than $240 million — and it’s not finished yet
  • The 2019 “resolution”: A $70 million council settlement owners believed had drawn a line under the problem
  • The court ruling (June 2026): Associate Judge Liz Gellert rejected two owners’ conspiracy claim, ordering them to pay $636,000 in unpaid levies plus six-figure costs
  • Individual exposure: Total repair bills of up to $800,000 per unit, with some levy invoices alone running $135,000–$196,000, payable within six weeks
  • Who’s running it now: Deloitte, appointed by the High Court as administrators to arrange external financing
  • Expected finish: 2027 — fourteen years after the leaks were first found

How an $85 Million Repair Bill Becomes a $240 Million One

Leaky building costs don’t escalate in a straight line. They compound — and St Lukes shows exactly how.

  • August 2013 — Leaks are first detected.
  • 2019 — Auckland Council settles for $70 million. Owners believe the worst is over.
  • First tender — Stage one alone is costed at $120 million.
  • November 2022 — The estimate climbs to $195 million.
  • 2024 — The bill reaches $240 million, driven substantially by post-Covid construction cost inflation.
  • 2027 (expected) — The project finally finishes. Stage one alone took more than four and a half years — two years longer than planned.

None of this is unique to St Lukes. Every year a defect goes unaddressed, three things compound at once: construction costs inflate, water keeps finding new ways into the building, and professional and legal fees stack up. That’s the mechanism — not bad luck — behind almost every leaky building bill that ends up bigger than anyone budgeted for.

One owner couple received $273,937 from the 2019 settlement that was meant to close the case. They’ve just been ordered to repay more than double that — $636,000 — in unpaid levies alone.

(Source: NZ Herald)

What Is a Leaky Building? (And Why “Leaky Home” Problems Rarely Stay Small)

A leaky building is a structure where water has penetrated the building envelope — the walls, windows, roofline, and junctions meant to keep the weather out — usually because of a design, material, or workmanship defect rather than ordinary wear and tear. In New Zealand, the term covers everything from a single leaky home to sprawling apartment complexes like St Lukes.

The reason a leaky home problem rarely stays small is structural, not just financial. Trapped moisture keeps damaging framing timber long after the visible symptom appears, which is why an accurate, evidence-based inspection — not a patch-and-paint job — is what actually stops the bill from growing. St Lukes is what happens when that investigation, remediation, and long-term funding never quite catch up with the damage.

Why Long-Term Maintenance Plans Exist — and Why They’re Compulsory Now

Since May 2024, every body corporate in New Zealand has been legally required to hold a long-term maintenance plan (LTMP) — there’s no opting out. For larger developments of 10 or more units, like St Lukes, that plan must now look 30 years ahead and be independently reviewed at least every three years.

The requirement exists precisely because of situations like this one. A properly prepared LTMP forces a body corporate to confront, in real numbers, what a building will cost to maintain over its lifetime — instead of discovering the true figure only once a defect has become unavoidable and urgent.

An LTMP won’t prevent every weathertightness problem. Some defects are latent and only surface after independent investigation. But a well-prepared plan, reviewed and costed independently, gives a body corporate the ability to budget for major work in stages, build adequate reserves over time, and avoid the kind of levy shock that landed on St Lukes owners in six-figure instalments payable within six weeks.

Keeping levies artificially low and hoping maintenance issues resolve themselves doesn’t remove the cost. It just defers it. As St Lukes shows, deferred cost comes back with inflation, legal fees, and years of lost value attached. (See the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development’s summary of the Unit Titles Act changes for the full legal detail.)

What This Means If You Own, Buy Into, or Manage a Body Corporate

Buying into an older apartment complex? Due diligence needs to go well beyond a LIM report. Before you settle, review the body corporate’s minutes, levy history, current LTMP, and any live litigation or remediation status. Latent defect risk attaches to whoever holds the title today — regardless of who owned the property when the original defect occurred.

Sitting on a body corporate committee? An independently reviewed LTMP, backed by a proper cost plan rather than a rough estimate, is the clearest tool available for avoiding a St Lukes-style escalation.

Suspect a weathertightness issue? Get it investigated early, using recognised methodologies, rather than reactively. A manageable issue caught early rarely becomes a nine-figure one.

Why a Proper Leaky Home Inspection Beats a LIM Report Every Time

A LIM report tells you what’s on the council file. It won’t tell you what’s actually happening inside a wall right now. That’s the gap a proper leaky home inspection is built to close.

Recognised international methodologies — ASTM E2128 (the standard guide for evaluating water leakage of building walls) and AAMA 511 (a forensic water-penetration testing guideline) — exist for exactly this reason: to test a building’s weathertightness with evidence, not guesswork, before a small defect becomes a nine-figure one.

That kind of investigation is only as good as the team running it. And that’s where most building consultancies run into a structural problem of their own.

The Aamsko Difference: One Integrated Building Consultant Team, Not Six Disconnected Ones

Most leaky building projects don’t fail because nobody raised the alarm. They fail — or blow out — in the gaps between specialists: the surveyor who never talks to the lawyer, the lawyer who’s never read the cost plan, the quantity surveyor brought in after the scope is already wrong.

Aamsko was built to close those gaps. Since 2002, we’ve combined building surveying, law, architecture, quantity surveying, asset management, and project management inside one integrated building consultant model — so your leaky home inspection, your LTMP, your remediation design, and your contract risk are all managed by people who talk to each other, because they’re on the same team.

For a body corporate, that means:

  • One weathertightness investigation, using recognised standards like ASTM E2128, that stands up to scrutiny from insurers, councils, and courts
  • One independently costed long-term maintenance plan instead of a rough guess that unravels the moment a defect is found
  • One point of accountability, from preliminary assessment through to remedial design, delivery, and sign-off

St Lukes Garden Apartments shows what it costs when a building’s true condition and its funding plan drift apart for over a decade. An integrated building consultant model exists to stop that drift before it starts.

Quick Answers: Leaky Buildings, LTMPs and Building Consultants

What is a leaky building? A leaky building is a structure where water has penetrated the building envelope due to design, material, or workmanship defects, leading to decay and weathertightness failure. It affects everything from single homes to large New Zealand apartment complexes.

What is a leaky home inspection? A leaky home inspection is an in-depth weathertightness investigation — typically using recognised methodologies like ASTM E2128 and AAMA 511 — that tests where and how water is entering a building, going far beyond what a visual check or LIM report can tell you.

Is a long-term maintenance plan (LTMP) compulsory in New Zealand? Yes. Since May 2024, every body corporate must have an LTMP. Developments with 10 or more units must plan 30 years ahead and review that plan independently at least every three years.

What does a building consultant actually do? A building consultant investigates, plans, and manages a building’s condition and remediation — from weathertightness testing and cost planning through to contract administration and dispute support. An integrated building consultant, like Aamsko, does all of this under one roof instead of you coordinating separate firms.

How do I know if my body corporate is at risk of a St Lukes-style blowout? Watch for a maintenance plan based on rough estimates rather than an independent cost plan, levies that haven’t moved despite an ageing building, and any weathertightness concern that’s never been formally investigated.

The Bottom Line

St Lukes Garden Apartments is an extreme case. But the mechanics behind it — the gap between what’s budgeted and what a building actually needs — apply to any ageing building with deferred maintenance, and that gap tends to widen every year it goes unaddressed.

If your body corporate’s long-term maintenance plan hasn’t been independently reviewed and properly costed, or you suspect a weathertightness issue that’s never been formally investigated, that’s worth fixing before it becomes a headline. Talk to Aamsko’s integrated building consultant team about an LTMP review or a weathertightness investigation.

And if you’d rather catch the next case study before it becomes a $240 million cautionary tale: follow Aamsko on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. We break down real New Zealand building and body corporate cases like this one, in plain English, as they happen.

Aamsko is an integrated building consultancy that has worked on high-rise remediation and weathertightness projects across Auckland since 2002, combining building surveying, law, architecture, quantity surveying, and project management under one roof.