Townhouse owners fight for justice

During a winter downpour in 1998, Gray arrived home to find water cascading into the internal garage and laundry. The problem was traced to poorly applied waterproofing on an overhead deck and repairs were carried out by the original installers, Architectural Waterproofing .

"We weren't to know they were just putting a bandaid on, not solving the underlying causes," says Gray.

The names Manning and Taradale were not then synonymous with leaky building disasters such as Sacramento in Howick, The Grange in Albany, Vista Rosa in Mt Albert and West End in Grey Lynn.

In the mid-1990s, Manning was riding the wave of an immigration-fuelled property boom, and had a reputation for stylish apartments and townhouses.

The Ponsonby Gardens townhouses designed by Peter Townsend were no exception: two storeys, three bedrooms, clad in weatherboard and stucco, with complex roof shapes and upstairs decks. They came with European fit-out, internal garaging and private gardens.

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