The ACT Government has offered a Forrest family $3 million to buy back their Mr Fluffy-affected home. The figure is the highest price to date for any home purchased under the buy-back scheme which Chief Minister Andrew Barr has described as "on the edge of affordability" for the ACT.
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The independent valuations undertaken by the Australian Property Institute on the contaminated Forrest property were within 10 per cent of each other, suggesting the $3 million figure was a fair market price for the large home and block, according to a spokeswoman for the ACT Asbestos Response Taskforce.
The owners of the home have yet to accept the government offer.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr will announce on Wednesday that owners of 806 of the 1021 affected homes in the ACT have opted in to have their houses valued. Of those, 230 have already received their valuations and accepted offers as part of the $1 billion buy-back scheme.
The government has completed the sale process on 15 properties – which now await demolition and potential rezoning.
Last week Mr Barr announced a $770 million budget deficit for 2014-15, which includes a hit of $385 million from the Mr Fluffy legacy.
Along with a bottom line deterioration of $53 million related to government superannuation liabilities, the mid-year budget update assumed a 75 per cent take-up in the buy-back scheme, with the rest of the house purchases and associated costs expected in the 2015-16 financial year.
Mr Barr said the response, set to leave taxpayers with an overall loss of about $400 million, continued to significantly impact on the territory's budget and was "on the edge of affordability".
"The taskforce is working with individual homeowners to be flexible in areas where it can – such as on preferred and extended settlement times.
"However, it is important for homeowners to have certainty in the scheme and therefore to be clear that the program cannot, and will not, fundamentally change. I remain confident that the current program is the fairest, most responsible and affordable response available to the ACT," Mr Barr said.
To date the ACT government has provided $2.5 million in financial assistance payments to families and another $1.3 million to fund asbestos assessments of properties.
Offers being made on properties range from between $400,000 to $3 million.
Mr Barr acknowledged growing levels of frustration among affected families, who were keen to stay on their blocks.
"I also acknowledge there are unknowns causing frustration for homeowners. For example the taskforce simply cannot provide a definitive cost of what a block may be worth in two, three, four years as like any sale of property or land, there are market movements," he said.
"The taskforce also cannot provide at this time a definitive timeline of when particular houses will be demolished and blocks ready. As soon as the taskforce can provide more detail, it will."
