Gold star claims – hearing is believing

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but then they also say that flattery will get you nowhere. It seems Building Commissioner David Chandlers ICIRT star ratings are so valuable, some companies are saying they’ve got them when they haven’t even been tested. Or at least, the minions sent out to deal with the public are.

ICIRT, or Independent Construction Industry Rating Tool, is a way that developers can have their competence and general reliability assessed, with any firm that achieves three stars and over listed on the NSW government website. Firms with fewer than three stars don’t get a guernsey.

We recently attended the first viewing of an off-the-plan apartment where we were plied with coffee, sandwiches, cakes and something that fell between out-and-out fakery and accidental misinformation.

“Did you know this development has received an ICIRT five-star rating from the Building Commissioner?” the chap hired by the developer to welcome us to the new block said.

“Really?” we said. “That’s amazing!”

“Yes, David Chandler came through the other day and gave us a big tick.”

“Wow!” I replied. “I know David so I’ll ask him what he thought of the development.

Pause. Speaker turns pale.

“Actually, it wasn’t Mr Chandler. It was his team … yeah …Matthew Press, I think?”

I told him I also know Matt Press. Silence.

The ICIRT gold star star ratings , simply put, are intended to reassure us about the reliability of developers, especially of off-the-plan properties.

The NSW Building Commissioners’ website lists the criteria for measurement as capability, conduct, character,  capacity, capital and counterparties.

Clearly, whoever wrote this guide would never let information get in the way of alliteration, so what do they actually mean?

“Each criteria (sic) has several sub-criteria that measure the transparency, trustworthiness, experience, track record, financial stability and regulatory compliance of the builder or developer,” the website goes on to say.

“The rating system ranges from 0 to 5 stars and only parties with three or more gold stars are included on the iCIRT register.” 

In other words, if your developer isn’t on the registry, they either didn’t get the three stars or they chose not to submit themselves for detailed scrutiny. 

The claim that our new investment had a five-star rating set a couple of alarm bells ringing. 

We’d been told that the developer had decided not to apply for an ICIRT rating because, they said, their local reputation was good.

Also, there are only a couple of developers who’ve acquired the full five-star rating and our lot wasn’t one of them. So we checked the registry.  There was no mention of the developer.

Then we called the Building Commissioner’s office. Had they assessed this developer? Nope. Nothing.

We called the developer. “Oh, they must have got confused between the ICIRT rating and the certificate of occupancy.”

Really? If the genial host knew the names of two of the top people in the arena, how come he didn’t know the difference between an ICIRT rating and an occupancy certificate?

And why would they offer the information, unprompted, when it was demonstrably not true? Maybe they didn’t think anyone would even know how to check.

For Commissioner Chandler, this is good news and bad.  Firstly, the ICIRT rating clearly has currency out there. Developers really want those stars.

But alarmingly, it seems some are claiming awards that they haven’t earned, hoping that the people they are lying to don’t know any better.

You can check to see if your developer has achieved a star rating by going to the registry website. And while you’re there, you can buy a detailed report from upwards of $1750 (plus GST), depending on how much information you need.

Now, since this was published in the Financial Review, and Commissioner Chandler outed the developer in social media, they have been getting concerned phone calls from people in the industry. It seems the comments made by the meet-and-greeter were not at the behest of the company and he was, indeed, confused between the Certificate of Occupancy and the ICIRT gold stars. He just made the mistake of saying too much to precisely the wrong people.

I have since met the developer and he swears blind they neither instructed nor encouraged their operative to claim they had an iCirt rating. I believe him. I also think they would have had little trouble getting one if they had applied. And maybe that’s where this whole problem begins and ends.

Jimmy Thomson edits the Flat Chat website and hosts the Flat Chat Wrap podcast.  States have different strata laws.