Gravely ill man’s house sold ‘from under him’ by finance company, lawyer says

Friday, 29 May 2026

A gravely ill man has had his house “sold from under him”, according to his lawyer, who is battling to try and stop the sale settlement and return him to his home.

Anton Wood, 60, failed to pay the mortgage he received from Avanti Finance from March 2025 - a payment of about $228 a week - as a result of being unwell with what turned out to be aggressive, stage 3 lymphoma.

He has been unable to work, and while racking up late payments of over $5000, spent months trying to get repayment relief or some sort of deal struck with the financiers to no avail.

Now his Kāpiti Coast house has been sold at auction for lower than its estimated value of between $515,000 and $595,000 on online property website Homes.co.nz. Property valuation website QV records the capital value as $580,000.

According to property website Realestate.co.nz, the sale price was recorded as $290,000.

His lawyer, Strachan O’Connor’s Lucy Gay, who is speaking out on his behalf, believes the process by which Wood looks to have lost his house is “at the least, bad faith”.

Gay met Wood when he limped in off the street a few days ago, asking to talk to her boss, who was out of the office at the time.

“When I said my boss wasn’t there I heard him sigh and say, ‘I’ll have to get the train’, and so I said, ‘can I see you?’ - we went to the boardroom and we went through his papers, which were a bit dishevelled,” she told The Post.

Wood explained he’d been sick for quite a while and had latterly been diagnosed with blood cancer, and had been finally admitted to hospital at the end of 2025 to have six rounds of chemotherapy - a process that took several months and during which, he lost his job.

The Post has seen Wood’s clinical notes which confirm his debilitating symptoms and diagnosis. These have included fatigue and shortness of breath, impacts to mobility and daily functioning and the “development of peripheral neuropathy, impacting mobility and daily functioning”.

“He knew he was in default with his mortgage for $310,000 and straight away got in touch with Avanti saying he’d been in and out of hospital and could he have more time - and got given what can only be described as ‘the runaround’ - by the time he came to see me he was dealing with six different people,” Gay said.

Being older and not technically proficient, not to mention very ill and going in and out of hospital, Wood did not make headway in getting heard by Avanti, Gay said. To try and get back into regular payments, he applied and was rejected for a sickness benefit.

Wood was in and out of hospital from November 2025: “The stress from thinking he would lose his property put him, as his nurses said, in a “complex state”.

The property was subsequently sold by Harcourts in April. Gay said she didn’t know who the buyer was.

Gay said Avanti’s lawyer has affirmed the right of the company to sell the property, citing the notices it had provided him, and (stating) the point of sale is not on settlement date - May 28, 2026 - but when the hammer came down at the auction.

“And we have a real problem with that, because being a general practice, we deal sadly with quite a few mortgagee sales, and there’s a standard document from the bank that usually provides a clause allowing the home owner to repay the loan in full right up until settlement day.

“Obviously this is in the lender’s best interests, so why is that not the case here? Anton now has the money but Avanti will not accept it, what is going on?

“Avanti will not supply us with any of the details of the sale … and we’ve made multiple requests to the lawyer and to Avanti and they won’t get in touch with us.”

Bolstering Wood’s position is that Gay asked him to find the money as a last-ditch bid to retain the house in his ownership, and against all odds, he managed to secure a loan from his brother for the entire $310,000.

“We sent him off (to) the bank, and got in touch with Avanti again and said ‘please cancel the sale because we have the money in full,” and they are refusing to do that.

“But they won’t supply us with the contract, nor confirm or deny whether that standard term exists in their contract. The same contract that exists in most bank contracts.”

A message from director of law firm Sanderson Weir to Gay said “I’m sorry to hear about your client’s health challenges. The mortgagee sale terms that Avanti has with its purchaser do not reserve the right to cancel without cause. There are specific terms if the mortgagee encounters an impediment to the passing of title but that is not the situation here.”

Avanti is also still chasing Wood for the outstanding $30,000 - the shortfall between the mortgage and the house proceeds.

The Post wanted to ask Avanti why it would not accept the mortgage money in full and end the sale, when the money was available.

It also wanted to ask Avanti about their contracts, and what it said in the contract about how long mortgagees have to come up with funds in a mortgagee sale situation.

The Post left messages with several people within Avanti, as well as its lawyer at Sanderson Weir. The lawyer had previously emailed Gay saying “Your client lost the equity of redemption (the right to pay the money in full and keep the house) when the property was sold unconditionally by Avanti as mortgagee. Avanti’s sale is unconditional, the purchasers deposit is paid and settlement will take place on the 28th of May.”

Avanti Finance’s head of marketing and customer experience, Kelli Leaning, said in a statement to The Post: “As you'll appreciate, due to our privacy obligations, we’re unable to comment on this matter.”

Avanti Finance is one of New Zealand’s largest specialist, non-bank financial institutions. Operating since 1989, the company holds a diversified trans-Tasman loan book exceeding $3 billion. It is privately and locally owned in New Zealand.