Top Dollar For Poor Quality Housing In Bruce?!

What we really need is some good earthquakes like China, well in the context of this post of course, that would sort out the men from the boys so to speak. Gungahlin (or lego land as I like to call it) would look like lego land after angry 4 year old stomped through it and the foreshore apartments would make a great underwater city to dive through in the lake. Well except for the visibility and the ear, nose and throat infection….

It’s a pity they don’t have a dodgy building industry setting in sim city 4 otherwise we could see the simulated effect on Thursday…..

Evenly damp garden beds around all four sides of a house will help in keeping the soil conditions stable, and stop the house shifting.

Hard to achieve these days though, with water restrictions and small blocks.

I used to look after maintenance for public housing in Brisbane. And with the recent drought, entire suburbs of houses were shifting so badly doors would not lock, windows not open, pipes need replacing etc.
Then in the wet season, the reverse would happen and the fixes we’d have done would need re-doing. The chippies and plumbers we employed knew what was required (knocking the places down and rebuilding) but capital expenditure wasn’t our job, simply maintenance.
It doesn’t surprise me similar things are happening in Canberra, especially as I bought a place in Gungahlin last decade so got to see how shoddy some of the work was locally.
But I’m guessing this goes on everywhere, and the punters handing over hundreds of thousands are mostly none the wiser.

I hear you on that one VYBerlina: but you did say “minor” These cracks I would estimate at about 10-15mm!

If you mean 10-15mm wide, then no way would I call that ‘minor’. At my house, I’ve noticed a couple of the shelves in the walk in wardrobe have come slightly off one wall (a couple of mm), and the paint has cracked very slightly around a couple of kitchen cupboard joins (some paint on the bit that flaked off solved the problem). And the driveway has some cracks also.

However, in some of the new units I’ve looked through (more for interest than serious intent), I’d say the standard of workmanship sucks. Obviously quick and dirty jobs. My approach, then, is to keep looking for structurally sound units of perhaps 8-10 years old that are in good condition (maybe even with light reno potential). If you’re seeking cracks appear almost overnight, though, and especially after rain, then I’d suggest they have some fairly serious issues.

@harvyk1: cheers for your perspective. It’s first hand views like yours which I’ve been keen to read about. I agree with your comments about holding the inspectors and developers financially responsible for this shoddy work.

I think in the future, buyers of these new properties need to take o more active role in their investment from the very beginning. For instance, if you are informed that foam will be used as a foundation, don’t make the investment. Do some background checking on the work that the developers done previously – and if they have a bad reputation, don’t hand over any money in the first place.

Or perhaps for those new punters, find out who developed buildings like Proximity and just steer well clear of them and take your business elsewhere. Otherwise, you might not have an investment in 10 years time, other than high blood pressure and a high ple of rubble that you poured your well earned money in to.

Yeah, a couple of years ago I had the pleasure of living in a new townhouse. I don’t know what sort of bribe the developer paid to the inspector, but I expect it was a substantial amount. We had

– Power points wired up incorrectly (can anyone say safety issue \ fire hazard with me)
– Light in bathroom stopped working within a week (same problem as above)
– Hot water heater not working (Apparently kids came along and stole bits off it, just for some reason the developer decided there was no reason to fix it)
– Plumbing put in the wrong way around (Made turning taps on an interesting experience, especially once the hot water heater was fixed, by us)
– Painters who rather than remove masking tape, simply painted over the top (OK, the paint job looked ok for about 2 months before the tape started pealing off the wall)
– Door handles which fell apart within a week
– Garage door broke within a week

Not the sort of things which a new house should be like, and I could go on.

We decided after we moved out that a pack of trained monkeys could have done a better job than the builders who built the place which we moved into. They really need to crack down on building inspectors who don’t do their jobs properly. Start suing them big time (along with cheapskate developers and builders) and lets see how quickly the quality of developments and housing in Canberra goes up.

Houses (and units) generally settle a bit over the first few years. Our house is now 6 years old and is showing a few minor signs of settling.

I hear you on that one VYBerlina: but you did say “minor” These cracks I would estimate at about 10-15mm! And it seems every time after it rains. Is it going to take a rainy night time collapse and casualties for anything serious to be done about this?

Houses (and units) generally settle a bit over the first few years. Our house is now 6 years old and is showing a few minor signs of settling.

That said, many Canberra builders seem to me to be fairly dodgy based on what I’ve heard from other places in Australia. All the units I’ve bought have been in complexes that are 8-10 years old (old enough to have settled and shown up any major problems, new enough that they are still attractive to people willing to spend inordinate amounts of cash ‘living the lifestyle’).

Bruce seems kinda overpriced to me anyway.

Nah, just being a silly pr.ck. I hate grammar Nazis, so really have to stop doing it myself.

Our brick veneer house on the south side has a pretty large crack from the top corner of a window – lazy-ar.ed builders didn’t put expansion joints in the brickwork. When we first looked at it people told us horror stories about having to get the foundations pumped up and how much it was going to cost. However, the engineer who inspected the house said we could just knock out the wall and put in French doors or bay windows (or even rebrick it) for a fraction of the price, and that as it was brick veneer, cracks didn’t affect the structural strength of the building at all. It’s been five years now, and the crack doesn’t look much different, though we’ve noticed some more movement inside the house – door frames getting tighter, etc.

Hax – I can’t agree that “you get what you pay for”. 400k for a lemon is paying a huge price, but very low quality.