One week old apartment --- Ruined by Rain

Last apartment I lived in put me off apartments for life.

It had no insulation so would hit close to 30 inside on a 20 degree day
The building leaked in lots of places, including the lift shaft so the lift regularly stopped working from wet electronics on rainy days (we were on the 7th floor, ugh)
Leaks within the apartment were mostly from the windows not being sealed to the structure
The light switches and power points and light fittings broke so often they had a full-time guy replacing them
Oven kept turning itself off, turns out it was installed with no insulation, love those burn marks in the cabinetry
The wet areas were only grouted where you could see them from the door, the vanities suffered serious water damage within months and the bath had bad cracking where the sun hit it
Building itself had some quite impressive gaps in the structure filled with lots of gap filler
While they were constantly fixing the building the residential bins were always full of builder's waste so we had our own smelly sidewalk dump for residential waste
And of course the builder pulled a sunset clause because Sydney has such terrible weather it delayed the build for *years* and all the OTP buyers were suing the builder for not being able to buy at the OTP price, just the current market price.

Looked lovely in the brochures though.

(Edit: being a total busybody I was always the one to report the broken lift to get the techies out to fix, and actually got the council on the bin situation too. Turns out we had literally dozens too few red/yellow bins as well)

 

Is this to stuff with people on purpose?
How much money can be saved by doing this.
I guess a bit if they're serial offenders.

 

When it comes to putting up the structure builders are psychotic and will do anything to make up a day.

 

Aiiyyyaahhh... a bit like the kitchen ceiling in one of my places right now... (the unit above me has floor issues)...
There's more propping up in a bedroom as well....

 

What the heck?
Did they come in to your apartment to do that or did you get it ready?

 

They came in...
The problem is I want to sell the unit to help keep down the PPOR debt to a reasonable level for the new place. I have to wait till its completed before I put it on the market.... (because... no sense in trying to sell it as is).... Hopefully it wont be much more than 4 more weeks.... meanwhile i'm out of multiple weeks rent till they compensate me (who knows when that will happen... and who knows how much they decide they are happy to pay me). I am sure its not as much as I want which isnt so unreasonable as im still paying for electricity, water, wifi connection to the place along with council rates, strata fees, and the mortgage too), but moreover, I lose the chance to sell right now.... strata will pay some compensation but won't pay for the extra inconvenience and wont compensate me for not being able to put it on the market when I want it on the market already... I also get to partake in the joy of pitching in for a special levy to fix the floor of the unit above. Fun days....

I told them a few weeks before they got the equipment in I was going to put it on the market and the strata manager/committee took it to the tribunal in NSW and got the court order more or less. I just have to suck it up unfortunately...

 

Was it a leak?

 

Magnesite flooring. Unknown cause. Mind you this building is from circa 1970....

 

people do anything to save money & or time, when building. (time is money, so really, money)

A lot of the small developers of duplexes are clueless slimy buggers, they will do anything, our standards are pretty high, when you come from other places, they probably think we are nuts wasting so much money, and no one is watching you as a small developer & they often have people who sign off on things who care little apart from the $

 

@Gockie that is a bit of bad luck with the timing.....

 

Wowers.
I was going to say, can you take it the tribunal.
Hope it all works out soon.

 

seems pretty serious as it affects the structural integrity of the buildling. Better to get it fixed properly you could get insurance claim. i on the other hand am sorting out a mould issue.

 

Any idea what's causing the mold?

 

Yes had a hole in the AC drain pipe

 

Successive NSW governments (Labor and Liberal) have a lot to answer for, for decades of actions that create this situation. Ultimately that's us, though, because we voted for them and accepted bad government, too busy to pay attention.

1) Poor control of home building licensing: it's too easy to get a builder's license i) not necessarily knowing what you're doing, and ii) not having a track record of doing things properly.

2) Private certifiers (instead of Council or independent): when the certifier wants the builder's next job, they have an incentive not to try to hard to find faults at critical stage inspections or any other time.

3) Irrational market: exactly as jaybean said when it's a boom time people rush to buy and the decisions aren't made calmly or with proper information - but the state government is addicted to stamp duty and sees perpetuating a construction boom a sound economic management (I disagree with it).

4) Home-owners warranty: if you need further evidence of (1) & (2) above, the failure of the insurance regime years ago leaving SI corp (NSW government backed) as the sole insurer to the poorly regulated building industry.

5) Home building act - was weak enough in its protections for consumers years ago - and was further weakened with the reforms effective Jan 2015.

What a joke. People are mortgaged to the hilt and we're letting developers make excess profits by not even building properly. And the worst thing, that kills me, for every dollar they save at build time it costs tens or hundreds of dollars to retro-fit, repair defects, or otherwise cope with the failures from cost cutting. Proper construction is the most efficient way to get durable construction, done right when the places are built. Try to retro-fit fire safety measures, waterproof membranes, deal with concrete cancer from inadequate cover to the reo, structural failures from poor site preparation, footings, etc, the list goes on. Ridiculous.

 

which of the Bathla's built apartments are we discussing about here? Is it Aurellia street Toongabie, Portico Plaza one?