Many new-home owners dissatisfied — survey

Press, 7 August 1976, Page 20

Many new-home owners dissatisfied — survey

PA Wellington A significant number of new-house owners are dissatisfied with the service they have received from thenbuilders. according to the director of the Consumers’ Institute (Mr R. J. Smithies).

Mr Smithies said the master builders recently claimed that one of the main reasons for introducing a new house guarantee scheme would be to protect the home owner against a builder’s being declared bankrupt. Although this was an important consideration, it was not the most pressing protection needed, said Mr Smithies.

“Our complaints service has revealed that a significant number of new house owners are dissatisfied with the service they have received from their builders.”

The pessimistic picture of the problems of many new home buyers had been confirmed by a pilot survey in Porirua.

“This confirmed, in a typical new housing area, what had already been shown in the complaints made to us: namely, that a fifth of new home owners had serious cause for dissatifaction with their builders,” Mr Smithies said. Of the 51 home owners in a street who replied to the

[survey, almost a third had trouble with the building of their house. It was clear from the information supplied that 12 of the 51 home owners had “intolerable” experiences.

Both the complaints statistics and the survey showed that the problems were caused by master builders and by non-master builders. “Of the 12 highly dissatisfied home owners in our pilot survey, nine had engaged master builders. ! "‘The picture that came 'through from the answered questionnaires was of delays in starting, very late completion, serious overruns in building costs, and generally defective workmanship. “Twenty-one out of 51 of jthe owners reported they were given only a month’s maintenance period. Thirty-

six of the 51 said faults appeared during the maintenance period. Of those who found faults during the maintenance period only 11 said that the builder fixed them satisfactorily. Even more important were the number who found faults after the maintenance period —26 of the 51.” Mr Smithies added, however, it was important that most of the home owners in the survey were satisfied or had relatively minor complaints. “This confirms what we already know —that there are many ”ood builders doing satisfactory work.”