A Christchurch woman has taken to Facebook to find an angel investor to help fix her earthquake-damaged home and save her from financial ruin.
On-solds are earthquake damaged homes which have been sold in good faith, and bought by unsuspecting buyers.
If the repair bill goes over EQC's $115,000 cap, the homeowner has to foot the bill.
Next to one of Christchurch's main roads, Angela Smalley bought a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom 1980s house last year in the hope it would be her forever home.
At 53, this was the first house Angela, along with her son, had ever purchased.
"It did look perfect on paper, in fact it almost looked perfect in reality as well," she said.
After the earthquakes EQC assessed the house and decided that all damage would cost $6000 to fix.
She received that $6000 to do the work - which she expected to be cosmetic - as part of the purchase last year.
Everything was fine until wild wind and rain lashed Christchurch last year.
"We had a big storm last July and that caused it to leak, the only problem was that it was leaking on the ground floor of a two-storey building," she said.
"The water had to come from somewhere."
During the earthquakes the walls moved up and down, creating large gaps between the roof and walls.
Those gaps were hidden by vinal wallpaper and cladding. But over the years, water poured in.
"The water then travelled through its beams, down its stud work and was rotting the cladding from the inside out," she said.
"This is earthquake damage that was not caught."
But at that point Ms Smalley believed the leaking problem could be fixed relatively easily.
She went back to her mortgage provider, who lent her another $60,000 to make the house watertight.
At this point she owed $520,000 on a house she paid much less for.
Ms Smalley went back to EQC to reopen the old claim, but a new discovery - asbestos in almost every room - pushed the repair bill far over EQC's $115,000 cap.
The total repair bill was more than $200,000.
Almost all options exhausted, she has now taken to Facebook, asking for an angel investor to lend her the money to get the main construction work done, sell the house, and get rid of the mortgage.
That work did not include things like painting, tiling, plastering - at 53 years old that is something Ms Smalley is having to learn how to do herself on YouTube.
EQC states that any repairs that go overcap can be passed along to your private insurer.
But Ms Smalley said given her home insurance policy only came into effect last year when she bought the property, everything was "pre-existing damage".
The weight of everything - the damage, the rot, the asbestos, was slowly getting too much.
She has had to move in with her mum on the other side of the city, and her full-time job did not come close to covering the mortgage interest payments, she said.
"This is the first time I has ever owned [a house] ... it wasn't going to be a situation where I can afford to do this multiple times until I retire, this was all I had," she said.
"Financially, every penny I have ever been able top put away over my lifetime has been sunk into the house."
Ms Smalley wrote to EQC and their minister, Megan Woods, in the last month, in the hope of getting some advice as to she could do.
EQC has not responded to that email, and a staffer in Dr Woods' office referred her to the Residential Advisory Service.
In a statement today, Dr Woods said the problem was that the law was unclear whether EQC or the insurance companies were responsible for paying out beyond the EQC cap.
She said the government would be sponsoring test cases to resolve the outstanding legal issues around where liability sits.
"People stuck in limbo because of an on-sold home are in an absolutely heart-breaking situation and this government wants to see them able to move on with their lives as soon as possible," said Dr Woods.
EQC deputy chief executive Renee Walker said the intial scope by EQC on Ms Smalley's property was probably wrong.
"That's was an EQC scope that was done very early on after the earthquakes," she said.
Ms Walker said she could not rule out the possibility that every EQC-repaired home was an on-sold.
EQC currently knows of 700 over-cap on-sold properties.
"I couldn't say yes or no, what I would say is people need to make sure they are getting building reports done before they are purchasing properties," Ms Walker said.
"The good thing is is that EQC is still here abnd we will be here until the last property is repaired so people do have an avenue to come back."
