A recent High Court case looked at the question of whether buyers under a purchase agreement can sue for damages for a breach of warranty by the sellers when the buyers had not carried out a proper due diligence under a due diligence condition, and where proper due diligence would have exposed the error in the warranty.
Buyers are generally required to use reasonable efforts to satisfy any condition in a sale and purchase agreement which is included for the benefit of the buyer. Some buyers include a ‘due diligence’ condition in an agreement in the belief that this will give them a right to cancel the agreement for any reason whatsoever.
In a recent decision, the Supreme Court has confirmed that if a Council negligently includes incorrect information in a Land Information Memorandum, and the person who ordered the LIM relies on that incorrect information, the Council will be liable for any loss that person suffers as a result.
Some years ago, you transferred your farm to your family trust. The trust didn’t have any money to pay you for it, so you loaned the money to the trust. You have been forgiving $27,000 of the loan each year to avoid gift duty, but now that gift duty has been abolished, you are wondering whether you should forgive the whole of the remaining debt in one go?
A recent decision of the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal has imposed new requirements on real estate agents. In several recent decisions, the Tribunal has mentioned that section 3 of the Real Estate Agents Act 2008 states that the emphasises of the Act is on the protection of consumers and the public, whereas in the past, agents were focussed on the interests of the vendor.
The High Court has ordered the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Land Information to reconsider their decision to approve the purchase of the 16 Crafar farms by Milk New Zealand Holdings Limited by using a different test.
From 1 March 2012, most design and building work on residential buildings can only be carried out or supervised by people licensed under the Building Act 2004. This means that the standard vendor’s warranties in a sale and purchase agreement may have to be amended.
