In one case, the council paid $137,000 after poor inspections were partly responsible for a house, built in 1999, leaking, with managers freely admitting their department was culpable.
It was a different matter with a home built in 1912, which had leaks that dated back to about 1957, when roughcast was added to the external walls.
The inspectors were legally required to check the entire house when they visited in 2004, but did not identify the historic problems, and the council was last year forced to pay $45,000 for the oversight.
Chief building control officer Neil McLeod said of that payout: "I don't believe it was fair, and you can quote me on that."Despite the payouts, council development services manager Kevin Thompson said because there had been just five claims against the council for leaky homes, and only two resulted in costs to the city, it was unlikely the council would see a flood of claims in future.
The failures to pick up the faults had been used as part of the inspectors' training, Mr Thompson said, to make sure the same problems did not occur again.
The inspectors involved were still working for the council.
The information about the claims was revealed in a report from Mr McLeod to a planning and environment committee meeting late last week.
The report dealt with the Government's leaky homes financial package, which from early next year could mean the Government meets 25% of eligible homeowners' repair costs, local authorities meeting 25%, and homeowners the remaining 50%.
The council's contribution was dependent on it agreeing to join the scheme, and Mr McLeod said in the report while the proposal had the potential to be "a very good solution" to resolving leaky homes issues, there was still considerable detail to be decided.
The variation between what was claimed and what was paid - one payment so far was negotiated to less than 25% of the claim - illustrated a decision the council had to grapple with.
Mr McLeod said nationally it was estimated 42,000 homes had been affected by poor design, workmanship or materials, or poor council inspection, and the total cost to repair them was estimated to reach $6.3 billion.
Eligibility for the new scheme was restricted to homes less than 10 years old that met the criteria of the Government's Weather-tight Homes Resolution Service (WHRS), to which homeowners could make claims.
In Dunedin, since the WHRS was introduced in 2006, there had been five cases, but only two resulted in claims against the council.
Both were settled outside court; one, for $205,000, was settled for $137,000, while the other, for $197,000, was settled for $45,000.
Mr Thompson said both settlements were confidential, and he was therefore unable to identify the homeowners.
The $137,000 settlement was for the home built in 1999, the claim was received in 2005, and the settlement was agreed in 2007.
In that case, multiple inspections had not picked up on problems like poor design and workmanship, and the contractors had been found to be culpable as well.
The $45,000 settlement for the 1912-built house related to consent granted in 2004.
The claim made, and paid, last year.
Mr McLeod said the original claim in that case, for $197,000, would have been "fought tooth and nail".
"It gets to the stage you've got to be pragmatic," he said, and a decision was made it was cheaper to pay part of the claim than to keep paying lawyers.
The planning and environment committee voted to respond to the Government's proposal with an "expression of interest" in the scheme, subject to discovering more about how it would actually operate.
In the Queenstown Lakes district there had been 38 claims lodged with the Department of Building and Housing.
Of those, 10 had been resolved with council involvement through either mediation or settlement, while seven were still being actively investigated.
Lakes Environmental building manager Peter Laurenson said there had been "some component" of payouts, but due to confidentiality agreements as part of the mediation process, figures could not be released.
However, Mr Laurenson said amounts paid were "at the lower end of the scale".
