A company behind the troubled Neufort high-rise development in Wickham has started returning deposits to buyers who signed contracts up to four years ago.
The Newcastle Herald reported in August that McGrathNicol had been appointed receiver of a company called 22 Park Avenue Pty Ltd after it defaulted on a loan to Pindari Capital, leaving more than 120 off-the-plan buyers in limbo.
McGrathNicol planned to put the land, with development approval in place for the apartment complex, up for sale in September.
PRD partner Ryan Houston, whose company marketed and sold the units, said on Wednesday that the property had been put on the market then quickly taken off and McGrathNicol had been "retired" as receiver.
Mr Houston said he believed at that point that the development would proceed.
"I thought it was back on. I then get a call from a new receiver called Newpoint Advisory, and they said ... [22 Park Avenue] had gone into receivership again," he said.
He said Newpoint had given every buyer the option of rescinding their contracts.
"We're in the process of frantically refunding all of these deposits," he said.
Newpoint said it had been acting for 22 Park Avenue's "previous mortgagee", Ellipse Hotel Canberra Pty Ltd, which now had been refinanced. Ellipse had refinanced Pindari.
Newpoint, which was appointed in September, said it had retired as receiver and handed control of 22 Park Avenue back to its directors.
The Newcastle Herald spoke to two buyers who had received their deposits but were worse off financially due to paying legal fees and missing opportunities to invest the money elsewhere.
One said he had paid a $52,000 deposit on a $520,000 unit in March 2018.
He had lost access to the first home-buyers grant he used to help buy the unit.
"From the growth we've had in the market, we would have had a bit of equity in it," he said. "It was definitely a financial disadvantage to me, but I'm probably more of a realist in that it was an investment and sometimes investments don't pay out."
Newcastle public relations specialist Jaimie Abbott used her life savings for a deposit on an investment property in Neufort last year. She said she had received her deposit "pretty quickly" after applying for it to be refunded.
Mr Houston said he understood the site would go back on the market without the encumbrance of buyer contracts fixed at 2018 prices.
"They will sell it at today's market rate," he said.
The developers behind Neufort are Sydney men Eddie Tran and Peter Blake.
The Blake Organisation won approval in 2017 for a nine-storey building with 150 units on the site behind the Lass O'Gowrie Hotel.
City of Newcastle entered into an agreement with the developers last year to raise the building's height 19 metres beyond the 24-metre limit in return for almost $1 million in public works.
The Herald has been told Mr Tran wanted to buy out Mr Blake's stake in Neufort but the two could not agree and were no longer on speaking terms. The Herald asked both men for comment.
