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Cautionary Note 44 – You’d have to be stupid to buy a badly built apartment!
April 11, 2003
Based on data collected from inspection of over 50,000 buildings we issue the following advice.
Buying an apartment of acceptable building quality is not as easy as many people think. Rather, the quality of the 5,000 apartment complexes Tyrrells have inspected depends upon:
- developer’s budget, management team and building experience
- contractor’s quality assurance process and management of subcontractors
- buyer’s commitment to making sure serious issues are promptly rectified.
Some developers/contractors do not understand how to attain reasonable quality in their buildings. Many are delivering buildings with problems which:
- take many years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of management and owner time to identify and resolve
- remain a concealed time bomb because quality assurance of key stages of the work was overlooked
- can never now be easily rectified.
After assessing many thousands of units Tyrrells offer the following warning to purchasers and their legal advisers:
- choose a developer and contractor with a reputation for high quality work – preferably who also has a formal quality process
- obtain and audit all Certification from the relevant consultants and contractors
- verify quality independently including assessment of key areas of Common Property
- do not settle unless all serious issues are fixed
- instruct new owners to work together within the first year of ownership to seek the necessary advice which will alert them to any new incomplete or defective items which the contractor should attend to
- negotiate hard to repair or incomplete and defective work firmly with the contractor
- avoid use of the Department of Fair Trading process wherever possible.
Adherence to the above may reduce the frustration of living with and trying to resolve these many problems which continue to be unacceptable to all parties.
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