[anothertrekker]

Hi all,

Would like to share my experience.

We bought a house based on a pre-purchase building report prepared by a Masterbuilder who is currently renovating the house. Well, he isn't doing the dirty job, his employee is. Yesterday, his employee found the floor where the hot water tank is to be sagging by 20mm while trying to build a new laundry door frame & fit the doors, & informed me immediately. This sag was not mentioned in the building report.

Spoke to the MB and he blamed the sag on the new 230ltr hot water tank that was only installed last week. When we bought the house, it had a 180ltr tank.

We had seen signs like uneven gaps between the floor and doors around the vicinity of the old hot water but as lay people, didn't understand the implication until yesterday.

Sought 2nd opinion from David Lewis of DML House Inspection Service LTD who read the building report and was appalled by its "lack of thoroughness". David inspected the laundry/hot water area. In his opinion, the sag was there when the house was built judging from some brackets on the floor, but thinks the MB who prepared the report for us should have detected it, reported it and adviced us accordingly i.e. strengthen the foundation of the house since the MB knew months ago that we were going to install a 230ltr solar hot water tank. If we knew about this sag before purchase, we could have negotiated for a better house price!

Now, the hot water tank has been installed & in order to strengthen the foundation, it has to be drained. I hate wastage...and I absolutely hate when this "strengthening work" could have been done months ago. Zero pro-active behaviour, all very reactive...a very "if the client doesn't know about it, let's keep quiet until something happens"/"sweep the problem under the carpet" attitude. It's unethical to me. Gosh, the building quality here...

Is David Lewis a good building inspector? He showed me a report he has just done and it was much thicker than the one I have. I will ask him to do a house inspection once the reno is done. Then I will tell you if he is a good inspector but I have a good feeling about David. Informed the MB about my getting a 2nd opinion about David and he sounded panicky. He may be more expensive but if he does a thorough inspection, it is definitely worth it.

Change - yes, we can.

[The Hodges]

Hi there,

And welcome to the world of building/pre-purchase inspections.

I can't answer your question, but you might want to check out this link (http://www.leakyhomeforum.co.nz/2008/12/03/pre-purchase-inspection-companies/).

Also, you should check (I am not sure if it is mentioned in the article) to see whether the inspector has any professional indemnity cover (and the level - it should be up at least the cost of rebuilding the property and it should not be limited - so check there terms and conditions) and ask whether the company has been subject to any claims.

Good luck.

[anothertrekker]

Hi,

Thanks for the link.

The Masterbuilder who did the pre-purchase inspection was recommended by the Bayleys agent I bought the house from. We were new in town, knew nobody & naively believed the myth that generally, people in a small town are nice & can be trusted. Been here less than a year, been disappointed again & again by people who are dishonest. Anyway, I agree with the author never to use a building inspector recommended by the housing agent. Bayley agent got the commission, previous owner got away with sloppy repair jobs because of a MB who was sloppy with the inspection.

David is a member of the NZ Institute of Building Surveyors & a Branz accredited advisor. How relevant are these? I don't know but I was impressed when he discovered a missing exterior timber that is suppose to be underneath the kitchen bay window, which the MB missed.

[The Hodges]

David is a member of the NZ Institute of Building Surveyors & a Branz accredited advisor. How relevant are these?

The NZIBS means that David has been through some formal training and met minimum standards to gain entry (check out www.buildingsurveyor.co.nz for more information). I am not sure how one becomes a BRANZ accredited advisor, and so while these advisors may be competent, I am not sure how this is measured.

As I advised previously, my advice to you is to check his PI cover, see what exclusions there are and see if any claims have been made against him. I am sure that David will be happy to discuss any concerns that you have.

Good luck.

[Super_BQ]

Sorry to hear about your ordeal building/reno experience. You are among many thousands in NZ having issues with their homes and wonder why is it in the past 10-20 years, houses aren't built any better than pre 80s era?

With my own eyes experience, i've become more conspicuous with tradesmen that claim to be members of some organisation such as the MB & Certified Builder's Assn. Quite simply there is no credibility because they too build leaky houses. What happens is if a member builds a bad house and gets complaints, the organisation just strikes them off the membership list. It doesn't mean that the person is barred from the building practice.

Last week or so I watched a program on Fair Go that made some very good recommendations on trademens requirements. The most important part they said was "They should be a LBP - Licensed Building Practitioner" which at the moment, by 2012 all home builders must have (though the NZ gov't has been quick to postponed the compliance date). The key difference with the LBP and the others is that the LBP is gov't registration. The requirements being that they've brought back the old ways of having apprentice schemes and audit backgrounds - basically a system to rid the bad and maintain the good tradesmen in practice. Because the apprentice scheme and registration had been thrown out in the past 10-20 years, it's no wonder shoddy building practices still exists today (it opened the door for such overnight builder to practice with no formal training whatsoever).

So i've become to believe that if you want a good job done, then your chances are better by picking an old head that has been building during the apprentice schemes 20/30+ years ago as those houses back then have little problems today.

It will take some time before the building industry improves. The LBP scheme is much like in Australia, Canada and abroad where people making judegement calls have to be acredit and vetted in. ANY prior experience that a builder has be shoddy can easily show up at the city council and those people will realise they can't get their LBP license.

[anothertrekker]

Am glad to hear about the LBP. I do hope this move will lead to a certain amount of protection for the general public who spend a lot of money in reno & building. However, I still believe the general public should also protect themselves by educating themselves through research because I am convinced people in the building industry will try to get away with something/cut corners whenever possible.