Sprucing the place up

I wonder how much deferred maintenance will wind up being covered by EQC and insurers.

When the EQC inspectors visited our place, they noted a cracked window. That one had been cracked for rather a while (an old stained glass piece, so reluctant to mess with it), but the one next to it was new. So we reported the one as new and the other as pre-existing.

As for Lyttelton Port:

Lyttelton Port Co says it is still working to determine its insurance claim following the September earthquake, despite media reports the claim could be between $50 million and $200 million.

It did not yet have a clear view on the value of the claim, the company said today.

Damage to the port was extensive, and the company was working closely with its insurers to measure the damage to the assets, and to decide the appropriate next steps for reinstatement.

It had insurance cover for asset replacement to current standards, along with business interruption insurance, it said.

The largest shareholder in the Port is the City Council. You might think that, at the margin, the Council prefers that reasonable dividends be paid in the short term to the retirees who've bought the other bits of stock than that money be invested in maintenance. And so maintenance could well have been left to one side for rather a while. I hope the insurers are good at parsing out the difference between damage due to deferred maintenance and damage due to the earthquake.

Town will look a fair bit tidier in 18 months' time than it did six months ago...