Last-minute bid to save Serepisos family home from sale fails

Wednesday, 25 October 2023

The Miramar property behind the last-minute court hearings.

A last-gasp effort to stop the sale of former tycoon Terry Serepisos’ family home has failed, meaning a $2.3 million Wellington property is going under the hammer in a no-reserve mortgagee auction.

A High Court reserved decision was released on Thursday, rejecting a plea by Terry and Lambros Serepisos to get an injunction to stop the sale of their family home by auction at noon on Friday. The judge found there was no “serious question to be tried”.

Terry Serepisos was once a high-flying businessman who owned the Wellington Phoenix football team and played a leading role in the New Zealand version of The Apprentice reality television show. He was made bankrupt in 2011 with debts of $200 million. He, with his brother Lambros, as trustees of the family trust, had challenged the sale of the family home, still used by Lambros and their elderly mother.

The family house at 91 Nevay Rd, Miramar, has a $2.3m rateable value and is going under the hammer, in a mortgagee sale with no reserve, at noon on Friday.

The High Court judge has reserved his decision.

Terry Serepisos was once a high-flying businessman who owned the Wellington Phoenix football team and played a leading role in the New Zealand version of The Apprentice reality television show.

It is the Serepisos family home and it was acknowledged in court that Lambros and his elderly, unwell mother, Aliki, would likely be out if it sold. But the family no longer has any on-paper ownership of it.

Property records show ownership has gone through a number of members of the Serepisos family, but the registered owner now is Black Robin Nominees – a listed company that changed its name to Nevay Nominees Ltd and was put into liquidation in April.

Terry Serepisos last week told The Post he had returned from overseas to discover the house – which he said was meant to have been returned to his family trust – had not been returned and the listed owner had taken a second mortgage out on it, then gone into liquidation.

He said then it was being “sorted”.

Liquidator Waterstone had put the house up for a mortgagee sale in July, but this was pulled at the last minute in a deal worked out with Terry Serepisos, Wellington Waterstone manager William Robinson said.

But the liquidator did not think it worthwhile taking the property back to market again as the expected sale price was less than the value of the first mortgage taken out against it. There was also a second mortgage out against the property. He could not give the value of those mortgages but confirmed the property’s new owner, Nevay Nominees Ltd, was the borrower.

While the liquidator took a back seat, the lender of the first mortgage had taken a Property Law Act (PLA) notice, which is a legal mechanism to let a person know they have defaulted on a mortgage and are at risk of losing their home.

In 2019, property investor Matthew Ryan bought Aliki Serepisos’ Caledonia St house after a series of unpaid loans.

Terry Serepisos, who has power of attorney over his mother’s affairs, used the properties as collateral to borrow more than $800,000 from Ryan.

The run-in with Ryan resulted in a police call-out after a skirmish and a Tenancy Court hearing, which resulted in Ryan winning possession of the property and the Serepisos family moving to the Nevay Rd property.