Family home destroyed in Kurnell hours after selling at auction

Interesting story here.....

Frank Partlic and his family were toasting on Tuesday night after selling their home for a record price.

The next morning they were standing among the debris of their almost-decimated house after a tornado ripped through the Kurnell property.



"It sold at auction for a record price for a block off the water," Mr Partlic said while standing among his collapsed roof in the loungeroom.

"The onus is on me because the contracts don't exchange for another six weeks ... so now I have to check my insurance and make sure that is up to date."

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The buyer apparently wants to go ahead with the purchase but I wonder how this will work.

The vendor will obviously not want to lose money on the sale so needs his insurance to repair the place before the sale can go through in order to retain the sale price. This could take a long time depending on how severe the damage is for them and their neighbours, especially as we're entering Xmas shutdown for the construction industry so nothing will happen for months.

As for the buyer, who knows, I guess it would depend on what they planned on doing with the place. If they were planning on knocking the place down or something then they may not want to bother waiting for it to be repaired. If they wanted to move in to a renovated house then I guess they'd have to wait for insurance. Either way, if they want to keep the place I hope they got their own insurance policy as soon as the auction finished so that it was valid before the tornado hit.

 

I suspect very few people take out insurance when they exchange contracts, as they should. It's going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

 

It does beg the question of whether or not the purchaser has an 'insurable interest' or an 'interest in the land'.

 

The problem for the buyer, is insurance would not help, most have a period where your not covered for this sort of thing, owner needs to try and rectify either way, a great example of how you could end up in an argument or be out lot's of money on property.

Another reason to avoid auctions too unless paying less for the extra risk.