House building and inspections: Target property cowboys not the system – Nick Hill

Calls are growing for tighter rules to protect buyers from New Zealand’s property cowboys. Photo / Getty Images

THE FACTS

• Pre-purchase property inspections are unregulated, allowing uncertified inspectors to operate without mandatory qualifications or insurance.
• There are calls for better standards and mandatory insurance aim to protect buyers from defective building work.

The Herald recently reported on a new homeowner saddled with a rotting, leaky house after several pre-purchase property inspections gave the house a health tick.

This is just one of many reported stories of leaky and defective buildings impacting innocent owners and occupiers because of poor-quality building work and sloppy pre-purchase property inspections.

As distinct from inspections undertaken by Building Consent Authorities during the consenting process, pre-purchase property inspections are unregulated. There is no mandatory requirement for formal qualifications, membership of a professional institution or indemnity insurance.

Anyone who is so minded can set themselves up as a pre-purchase inspector and produce reports – and often it’s uncertified builders who make the mistakes in the first place.

It is truly buyer beware. That’s why the Building Officials Institute of New Zealand established a robust Accredited Building Surveyor (ABS) programme for pre-purchase property inspections – to stop the cowboys.

We need to see better standards, minimum qualifications and mandatory indemnity insurance for the sector to better protect Kiwis purchasing their biggest asset.

A week ago, Herald NOW interviewed Master Builders chief executive Ankit Sharma, who commented that “it takes 19 months to build a house from the time consent is given to the code of compliance given ... even for simple homes sometimes 14 to 15 inspections”.

But there are also multiple influences on the length of time involved in building a house, whether it is 12 months or 24 months. This includes land purchase and transfer of title, design time and adjustments, design application – anywhere from a week to 20 days depending on the quality of designs – material supply problems, capacity of building companies and skilled labour availability, failed inspections and final sign-off.

Additionally, if a house needed 14 to 15 inspections, something is terribly wrong and those inspections are well and truly deserved to protect building compliance, building safety and the owner’s investment.

Some councils run between six to eight inspections and Auckland runs 10 as standard. They cover foundations, wrapped cavity, cladding, pre-line, plumbing, post-line, waterproofing, drainage and final.

Auckland has a 25% inspection failure rate and Tauranga up to a 50% failure rate. So, 14 to 15 inspections is comparatively good if the Master Builders are that bad.

We are awaiting the Government’s announcement on major reforms to the building consent system. This may include restructuring our Building Consent Authorities, who are there to safeguard homeowners from defective work. The self-certification of builders would remove existing protections for homeowners.

That’s a worry given the extremely high rates of non-compliant building design applications and inspection failures – 80% and 50% respectively, according to 2023 Model-Docs.

Let’s hope Building and Construction Minister Chris Penk makes the right decision – to target the cowboys, not the system.