Buyers search for a backstop

By GEOFF CUMMING

If there was a Dog and Lemon Guide for houses, a neon warning sign would flash around most makes and models built in New Zealand since the early 1990s using modern cladding techniques.

While a warrant of fitness gives car buyers some comfort, few of us go down that road with the biggest investment we'll make - buying a home.

Most blindly accept the real estate agent's spin and don't even get a pre-purchase inspection before signing up to 25 years of debt.

And why should we? This week's deregistration of one of the country's biggest private building inspectorates, Approved Building Certifiers, has done nothing for the confidence of home-buyers shaken by the leaky homes scandal.

The ABC deregistration coincided with the release of two reports damning Manukau City Council's handling of resource consents and building consents in the new suburbs around Howick and Pakuranga.

The Manukau inquiries (see accompanying story) uncover poor training, lax inspection procedures and record-keeping and a she'll-be-right approach to development.

No one believes the problems are confined to Manukau or ABC. As claims to the Government weathertight homes resolution service show, leaky buildings plague main centres from Auckland to Christchurch, and high growth areas from the Far North to Queenstown.

This week's revelations merely underline that neither council nor independent inspections are a reliable backstop against cowboy developers and slipshod building practices.

Where does this leave home-buyers? How are they to regard that appealing townhouse or apartment if they can't be sure about anything from the durability of the cladding to the building code compliance certificate - whether issued by the council or private certifier?

The advent of modern construction methods with new materials coincided with an era of deregulation, of councils contracting out core tasks, a permissive Resource Management Act - and a house building boom. A generation of homes has since been found wanting.

The flaws found in plaster and fibrous cement-coated exteriors - monolithic cladding - were exacerbated by the Government's approval of untreated timber framing, the disappearance of eaves from roof design and the installation of aluminium windows without flashings.

Yet the finger is now being pointed not at cladding manufacturers, not at architects, not at developers, not at builders and plasterers - but at those responsible for checking their work.

A fortnight ago, a Weekend Herald update on the leaky homes scandal found homeowners are increasingly citing councils and independent assessors in compensation claims. Few are reaching the courts or the Government's weathertight homes resolution service because councils are negotiating out-of-court settlements to avoid being found liable.

For it is councils that are most likely to foot the bill if homeowners prove their case - builders and developers simply fold up their companies to escape payment.

As for private building certifiers, they fear being forced out of business by tougher criteria in the Building Act, and because insurance companies will no longer back them.

Is it fair that councils and private certifiers are held responsible for defects caused by developers, architects, builders and tradesmen?

As building consultant Philip O'Sullivan says, flaws can be very hard to pick after the event. "There's about a one in 50 chance of [a layperson] knowing there's a leak in a house. Most people have a look at a house and are unaware of them."

There is also a desperate shortage of people with the skills and experience to detect faulty building practices.

That is one reason why the weathertight homes resolution service has proved so ineffectual in its first 18 months - it has taken that long to train enough assessors, mediators and adjudicators to handle the 2300 claims received.

Associate Commerce Minister John Tamihere says the buck must stop with councils and certifiers.

"This is one of the largest systematic disintegrations we've seen in any industry - from training to certification to the supply of materials and the quality of products."

Tamihere, who worked in the building industry and will be responsible for the new Department of Building and Housing, makes no apology for the crackdown on certifiers.

The crackdown should be seen alongside a series of moves to improve certification in the industry, he says.

"When I used to go on construction sites you wouldn't touch a job if the sparky and chippy and plumber hadn't done their job properly. Until we get back to that standard of ethics we have to regulate hard."

He concedes that a cloud will continue to hang over thousands of homes built "over a six- or seven-year period" from the mid-1990s, whose owners face a huge struggle to get compensation.

Planned changes to insolvency laws will prevent developers and builders setting up companies for individual projects then deregistering them to escape liability.

But for now, the Government expects councils both to police the industry and to be the main avenue of compensation for homeowners when things go wrong.

"It will get back to the situation before 1991 when councils knew from day one they have an obligation to see the job through."

But as the Manukau experience has shown, councils are not equipped for the task. Audit New Zealand said Manukau's building divisions were "characterised by increasing workloads, shortage of experienced staff, and significant pressure to get the consent out the door within the timeframe required.

"These issues are not confined to [Manukau]. Throughout the country, local authorities are finding it more and more difficult to attract and retain appropriately qualified staff to deal with the increasing volumes of applications received and increasingly complex issues."

In the new "risk averse" environment, councils will need to be far more pedantic in their handling of applications and, to cover their backs, much more careful with the paperwork.

Auckland City Council principal building officer Bob de Leur says councils have already toughened up in response to the leaky buildings crisis.

"I can categorically state in terms of new building consents, every one of them gets a really rigorous going-over. We are asking for every detail in the world to be provided."

Cladding systems are more thoroughly tested.

But, as de Leur points out, council inspectors are not clerks of works and cannot be on site full-time.

O'Sullivan says a system-wide reappraisal is needed. "Too much emphasis is placed on compliance certificates and not enough on making those who do the work responsible in the first place.

"The council role should be more as an auditor. It's unrealistic to hold the council responsible for faults that go back to the tradesmen."

Says O'Sullivan: "What's the answer for homeowners? Probably none in the short term."

His advice is to be very wary. "Either buy something [old] and conservative or something done with cavity construction. A lot of houses now - you have to put a question mark around them."