Property owner unaware of deck’s quiet demise

The owner of a Bayswater property that lost part of its deck in a landslide didn’t even hear it go.

A large pohutukawa dropped off the cliff at the rear of Raymond Dobbe’s Norwood Rd section on 27 January, taking part of the deck with it.

Dobbe was in bed at the time, oblivious to the dramatic action at the cliff edge.

“I was in bed, on my phone, looking at everybody else’s tragedies and didn’t even realise what happened until the next morning,” he said.

Water flooded his neighbour’s property, escaping down Dobbe’s driveway to saturate the land on the cliff’s edge.

Dobbe said the tree “slipped off” the cliff due to the softened soil.

He credits the house’s solid foundations for it being otherwise unaffected.

“When we built the house in 2003 or 2004, we built it according to the council’s 100-year environmental plan. But the deck is different. We put that in later”.

Dobbe said he originally wanted to build the house closer to the cliff face, but was advised to build further back as part of the plan.

“The council can be frustrating to deal with, but in this instance it worked out.”

Dobbe has removed the remains of the deck himself and is waiting to hear back from his insurance company.

Meanwhile, he has taken in a displaced Bayswater family who are staying in his pool house after they had to evacuate their home, which was flooded and needs repair.

Dobbe told the Flagstaff he saw online that they needed a place to stay for two weeks and decided to take them in.

He said “community spirit” was needed in such situations.

Multiple properties on Norwood Road have slips on the cliff face. Shoal Bay Rd faced both run-off and a king tide. Two cars were also cut off in Bayswater when a reserve became an island.

What’s been happening?

Happy New Year to all our readers. It’s been a while since our last commentary so here’s an update on what’s been happening in the mortgage market over the summer. Since the last Official Cash Rate (OCR) hike of 0.75% to 4.25% in November, we have seen most banks raising their floating interest rates to @7.99% along with their fixed rates. But just this week we have seen these fixed rates fall back a bit to @6.50% for the more popular one and two years and even now the five-year fixed has fallen to a similar level. This is because globally markets feel that inflation pressures are easing and term rates have fallen accordingly. For example, the key market indicator, the US 10-year bond rate, has fallen to 3.50% from well over 4%, hence our longer-term rates have also fallen. The big question now is how hard does the Reserve Bank have to go in mid-February, in terms of the next rate hike. Will it be 50 or 75 basis points or will they back off and see what happens as all the forecasts point to a peak in inflation and a real slowdown in activity or even a recession?

Certainly the property market and lending have slowed dramatically, but when people feel the peak has been reached in rates, sentiment can change quite quickly!

Grateful to council... Raymond Dobbe is glad he was advised not to build his house closer to the cliff edge, after part of his deck and a tree toppled with the rain