@Gus Kernot said:
I absolutely agree with you Jimmy. The Minister is shooting the messenger.NSW has horribly inadequate systems for dealing with building defects and Owners have no choice but to resort to legal action to protect their rights.
I was hopeful the recent sensitivity about developers being political donors might change the emphasis of government but apparently not so far.
Does the Minister think unit owners don’t vote?
I also strongly agree with Jim and Gus that Anthony Roberts is wrong about home building insurance. Its not the lawyers who are the problem.
I have been a member of an executive committee who tried unsucessfully to get a builder to fix problems and then went to the CTTT. The building defects included major waterproofing problems, major problems with the tiling of common areas and the electrical distribution board burnt down. We have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fixing the place. Apart from the builder our criticism is not of our lawyers but of the CTTT who were hopeless and totally unsympathetic to our consumer complaints.
Our lawyers worked against the obstructionism of the builder and the sheer idleness of the CTTT.
Our advice to others is do not buy a new unit in Sydney that has been built in the last 12 years as you will discover it has problems. Builders and the insurance know that the CTTT will do nothing and allow years of obstructionism.
In hindsight , our strata would have been better to raise the money itself rather than waste thousands of dollars in the joke that the CTTT is.