Te Awa SPV provided funding to Te Awa Lakes JV for infrastructure projects required to facilitate the Te Awa Lakes development. These infrastructure projects include the development of vital roading and water infrastructure that benefits all residents of the Te Awa Lakes development.
The Levy payable by the properties in the Te Awa Lakes development repay that funding over time.
Your Levy will be included as a line item on your general Hamilton City Council rates invoice. You need to pay your Levy at the same time as when you pay Hamilton City Council general rates and in accordance with the instructions on the Hamilton City Council invoice.
While each lending decision is made by the lenders, the major banks are aware of the IFF Act and the nature of levies payable by properties under the IFF Act (noting most properties in Tauranga and Wellington pay IFF levies). Your bank may include the Levy payments in their calculations of your household expenditure.
Yes. If you own a property that is within the Levy Area you are legally obliged to pay the Levy. The Levy you are obliged to pay will be included as a line item in the general Hamilton City Council rates invoices for your property.
We (either through Hamilton City Council or directly) will contact you to remind you of your obligation to pay the overdue Levy as set out in the Hamilton City Council rates invoice. We may charge late payment fees on the same basis as Hamilton City Council charges late payment fees for overdue general rates. If you continue to fail to pay the overdue Levy we may take legal action to recover the overdue amounts and associated costs. Te Awa SPV may force the sale of your property to recover unpaid Levy in the event of persistent non-payment (in much the same way as Hamilton City Council could force the sale of your property to recover unpaid rates).
The Levy has been set to ensure that the properties in the Levy Area are only paying their fair share of the infrastructure costs.
The $50m of funding provided by Te Awa SPV to Te Awa Lakes JV for the relevant infrastructure projects is not expected to cover the full cost of the infrastructure (which is estimated to cost ~$70m).
The fair share of the costs of the projects that could be allocated to the Levy Area was determined to be $55.4m. Given the Levy is only covering $50m of funding, the developer is effectively partially subsidising the properties in the Levy Area (for ~$5.4m). and the developer is also paying for the benefits that will accrue to Te Awa Lakes properties that fall outside the Levy Area.
No.
The levy will be charged from 1 July 2027. From that date, the annual levy payable for a property can be confirmed through Council’s public Rating Information Database (RID) and will form part of the rating information provided with a LIM.
As part of a standard sale and purchase process of a property that is subject to the Levy, payments made in respect of the quarterly payment period in which settlement of the sale occurs will be apportioned between the vendor and the purchaser in the same manner as Hamilton City Council rates are apportioned.
Yes, the Levy is subject to GST. GST will be added to the Levy on the Hamilton City Council rates invoice in the same way GST is added to general rates.