`Shoddy' Rotorua builders under fire

By REBECCA DEVINE in Rotorua
Fake consents and shoddy building practices have shocked Rotorua building inspectors and prompted a warning for home owners to be on high alert.

The Rotorua District Council says it is considering taking several people to court for breaking Building Act laws and an independent inspector says he has been horrified by the poor quality of workmanship revealed in some new Rotorua homes.

Council building services manager John Kardas said there was historically a lot of work done without consent in the district and it was only being picked up now that outside investors were finding buildings didn't reflect what was on paper.

Mr Kardas said the council was considering prosecuting about half a dozen people for not following various requirements of the Building Act.

The council was not going to pick on people who had made genuine mistakes but was concentrating on those people who constantly breached the act.

He was aware of some tradespeople telling clients they didn't need building consents when they did. In one case, a tradesman told clients he had a building consent and charged them for it but they later discovered that it was a fake.

Mr Kardas said without the proper consents, homeowners could have difficulty selling their properties and could even find their insurance was invalid.

Breaching the Building Act is punishable by fines of up to $100,000.

Despite the cases which had come to light, Mr Kardas said he didn't believe Rotorua was a hotbed of illegal building works.

The council's tough stance is being welcomed by local building assessor Jason Harvey from Rotorua Property Inspections.

He told the Daily Post he was shocked by the standard of some work he was seeing, which ranged from lazy workmanship to dangerous practices.

He had noticed the deteriorating quality of work over the past couple of months while doing pre-purchase inspections.

Mr Harvey said he had been doing more and more inspections on newer houses and was shocked by what he discovered - paint jobs not being completed properly, baths being put in backwards, walls bowing and floors not being level.

At one property he found 34 things wrong, including rattling doors, mismatched tiles and cracks in new walls.

Kerry Murphy from Inspect NZ said he had noticed the dodgy building practices because he was often called in to solve problems once they were discovered.

He said at least 40 or 50 per cent of home owners who did not have consents for projects told him they had paid a builder to get one, or had been told by a builder a consent wasn't needed.

Mr Murphy said his biggest criticism was tradespeople not following manufacturers' instructions.

In some cases not following the instructions could cause moisture problems or cracks in walls, Mr Murphy said.

"Some builders are rotten little sods but it is not always the builders' fault."

Registered Master Builders Federation chief executive officer Pieter Burghout said the cases highlighted the importance of checking builders' credentials first. He said the Building Act included a 10-year warranty over workmanship but that only applied if the builder was still operating.

Mr Burghout said if people used a registered master builder there was a third party guarantee so that if there was a disagreement the organisation carried out an independent inspection.

He said if the builder would not fix it, the organisation would.

He said the building boom was a potential cause of the problem.

"Because things are so busy people are so happy to have a builder that having a grizzle about the bath being the wrong way might seem minor. But that's not an excuse."

He said it was disappointing as the industry was trying to rebuild its credibility after the leaky building debacle.