Serious defects in many homes

By GEOFF CUMMING

Enjoy your breakfast, home handyman - then get to work before your castle collapses around you. It may be Fathers Day weekend but for 1.4 million homeowners this is no time to put your feet up.

There's borer under the floorboards, rising damp, peeling paint or a timebomb in the roof to fix in an alarming number of our homes, new research has found. And most owners are either oblivious to the problem or prefer to turn a blind eye.

The Building Research Association of New Zealand (Branz) says one in four homes are in poor condition, with a fifth having a serious defect raising immediate health and safety concerns.

In a blow for our do-it-yourself tradition, Branz says the average Kiwi house needs $4000 spent on it just to return it to moderate condition. But owners are spending only $1500 a year on average on maintenance. And the longer defects are ignored, the more costly they become to fix.

These sad home truths have emerged from the New Zealand House Condition Survey, released this week. The 142-page report follows 465 on-site inspections and 500 telephone interviews in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Poor ventilation beneath timber floors, corroded fastenings, inadequate clearance between the ground and wall claddings and problems in the roof space are the most common serious defects. Dampness was a problem in 30 per cent of houses surveyed.

The findings add to suspicion that many first-home buyers don't know what they are getting into when they sign up on older homes. Although newer homes feature low-maintenance materials, the typical Kiwi dwelling remains a timber-and-corrugated-iron affair needing continuous care as it ages.

Rod Coradine, Auckland manager of Quotable Value, says some do-it-yourselfers have been destroyed financially after striking unexpected problems which they can't fix themselves. Others hire a builder who discovers rotting framing, and in no time at all, their budget spirals from $20,000 to $80,000.

But the dream of owning your own home - and treating it as an investment - need not be a life sentence, says an author of the report, Adrian Bennett.

"We're not saying our houses are falling down," Mr Bennett says, "but people do need to think more about preventive maintenance and it does bear out the need to have a proper inspection done before you buy."

While assessors found many homes with poor or seriously defective components, few houses were substandard. The trap for homeowners is that many problems do not reveal themselves until it is too late - and most don't go looking for trouble.

Mr Bennett says moisture and poor ventilation beneath timber homes create the ideal climate for borer, gnawing away at a quarter of homes. Ventilation holes may become blocked while plumbing leaks or landscaping changes can cause water to pool.

Within the roof, poor insulation, moisture build-up from bathrooms and kitchens and insufficient supports are typical out-of-sight, out-of-mind problems. Insecure header tanks are an unlikely danger in older homes.



The findings are at stark odds with how most owners see their castles. Assessors judged 26 per cent of homes to be in poor condition while only 2 per cent of owners thought so.

Compared to an earlier survey in 1994, there is a growing contrast between the modernised interiors of older homes and their condition on the outside. "The worry is that expenditure on critical elements may be giving way to more cosmetic elements," says the report. "It was not uncommon to inspect old houses with new kitchens but with rotten weatherboards and rusting roofs."

Unsurprisingly, houses with the most defects tend to be owned by poorer and larger families paying off a mortgage.

Dr Ivan Johnstone, a senior property lecturer at Auckland University, says hard-pressed owners need to prioritise, making sure that what they put off this year won't hurt them in the long run.

But experts doubt that the findings will stop first-time buyers from falling in love with that character villa or bungalow.

It seems many are genetically programmed to spend their time and money on such bottomless pits.

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