Memerambi Estate
Fix Gets Green Light

June 3, 2015

The South Burnett Regional Council will spend $2.1 million to install missing roads and drainage on the failed Memerambi Estate.

In a split 4-3 vote at today’s Council meeting, Councillors agreed to declare the Estate a “benefitted area” and draw down a loan from Queensland Treasury to pay for the work.

Owners will repay their individual share of the total loan costs – estimated at an average $30,000 per lot – either in a lump sum, or over an extended period through their rates.

The construction of missing roads and drainage will allow property owners to take possession of their homes and begin the process of making them habitable.

Many of the homes are only 80 per cent complete at present, and a few were recently vandalised by local school children.

Work on normalising the Estate should begin in July, and is expected to take 18 months to complete.

Today’s Council decision will also begin to put an end to a 52-month saga which began when property development company Summit View Meritor Pty Ltd gained approval to build the housing estate in January 2011.

Summit View Meritor sold properties on the Estate to investors on the promise they could be rented out at high rates.

The company included a 12-month rental guarantee in their original offer, and under the arrangement was entitled to receive funds on individual lots when the houses reached 80 per cent completion.

In April 2011 the Council found it was unable to stop the company building and selling the house packages before infrastructure had been installed because the Estate was built on a historical subdivision created in 1908.

Under the existing planning scheme at that time, historical subdivisions were exempt from the usual requirement for a subdivision’s infrastructure to be completed before dwellings could be built.

However, in late 2012 work on the Estate suddenly stopped when the company ran into financial difficulties.

And in August 2013, Summit View Meritor was put into liquidation.

Owners then began several court actions against the developer, some of which also involved the South Burnett Regional Council

While the actions against Council were eventually dismissed, it was unable to take any action to fix the Estate’s problems until February last year when the court actions were concluded.

In June last year, the Council voted to make the Estate a benefitted area if the majority of owners agreed to it.

The offer was conditional on the “litigating owners” (ie the subset who had pursued court actions) agreeing to drop any future actions against Council.

Late last year all owners were sent the Council’s offer and given a deadline of March 31 to respond.

Their responses were received by the Council’s solicitors, who prepared a report which was submitted to Councillors for discussion last month.

Throughout the debacle, Mayor Wayne Kratzmann has said repeatedly that while he has great sympathy for the plight the Estate’s owners have found themselves in, he does not believe South Burnett ratepayers should “pick up the tab” for fixing the problem.

The benefitted area arrangement the Council passed today will instead spread the cost of building the missing infrastructure over all affected property owners.

But it will do so at low Treasury interest rates over an extended period in a manner he hopes will be affordable for the majority.

• A full report on today’s Council debate can be found here

Related articles:

• D-Day Looms For Memerambi
• Estate’s Fate Should Be Known Soon
• Councillors Query $3m Loan
• Memerambi Deadline Drawing Close
• Council Plugs Memerambi ‘Hole’
• Delays Anger Owners
• Memerambi Owners Offered A Way Out
• Memerambi Solution Inches Closer
• Council Puts An End To Historical Sub-Divisions
• Court Clears Way For Memerambi Solution
• TV Ambush ‘Un-Australian’
• Which Way Now For Memerambi?
• Drainage Problems ‘May Be Solved’
• Memerambi Homes ‘Not For Refugees’