“The Building Industry Is A Mess”

“The Building Industry Is A Mess”

Homeowners and Industry as much to blame for poor building products in their homes as MBIE says publisher of consumer Building Guide magazine and website.

“Homeowners and the industry are as much to blame as insufficient industry oversight by MBIE for poor building outcomes and use of faulty products,” says the publisher of the Building Guide, the preeminent guide for consumers who are building and renovating, Mark Graham.

“Auckland Council are failing 40% of inspections and slabs are failing in Christchurch,” he says, “and now we have substandard taps, many likely with lead leaching into drinking water, being installed into homes. You’d think that would be a wake up call, but light fittings win out over footings every time. And people think the Leaky Home disaster is history – well, it’s happening all over again but in different ways now.”

“Report after report comes out identifying consumer education as being a priority to encourage better building outcomes and better productivity, but consumers have to want to educate themselves and the wider industry needs to encourage that education.”

“A survey done on the Building Guide website last year shows that just 17% of builders are handing out the mandatory ‘Prescribed Checklist’ to their clients which sets out a list of the things of which builders need to have a clear understanding with their clients – including a contract for work with a value of more than $30,000, a clear understanding of the scope of work, but number one on the list is that the client has to be ‘informed about building’. MBIE have not defined what that means and so builders and designers can do what they like,” Graham says.

“MBIE spent around $400,000 for a three month campaign at the beginning of 2015 that consisted of a couple of banner ads on two websites, a few radio ads and painting three concrete trucks to promote the launch of new consumer protection measures introduced in January last year, but have done nothing since then. There have been an additional 20,000 people seeking consents for new buildings and roughly the same number for renovation consents and yet these new people have been ignored.”

“And homeowners are no better. Of the 17,000 visitors to the Building Guide website last month, 5500 looked at how much will it cost to build and just 50 went to the page titled ‘Your Responsibilities’.

“Consumers want to look at pretty pictures and spend more time trying to work out what their build will cost them in dollar terms than they do on learning about what can go wrong on a building project with the potential for years of remediation work and negative impacts on their health. Even though they are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and they will be living in that house for many years they’d rather spend time choosing tiles for their bathroom,” says Graham.

“Builders have said to me that a client with a bit of knowledge is a pain in the arse, and architects have looked at me and said, ‘but I do that for them’,” he went on, “and yet consistently we hear stories of poor workmanship, poor design and it just shows a lack of industry concern .”

“We have regularly approached MBIE over the past decade we’ve been publishing the Building Guide to work together to educate consumers and every time we get rebuffed. Their answer is that their role is policy, not education. Christchurch council reported handing out 1000 Building Guides in just 40- minutes at the Christchurch Home Show last year, so clearly there are some consumers who want that information, but unless there’s MBIE and industry commitment to consumer education, we will continue to end up with too much substandard housing.”

Mark Graham has been publishing the Building Guide for a decade, BoB for seven years, Design Guide for five years and Yiju – the NZ Property Investment and Building Guide (Mandarin, for Chinese migrants and investors) and regularly appears in the media commenting on building and housing issues.

The Building Guide is an advertising supported guide to regulations and processes around building and renovating, given free to councils around the country (with the exception of Auckland Council), Home Ideas Centres, is distributed free to Master and Certified Builders and some Licensed Builders, NZ IA and ADNZ members for passing on to their clients and is also available via selected retail outlets.

Design Guide is a guide for consumers wanting to understand house design and is themed, with case studies written by architects and is available via selected retail outlets including Pak n’Saves, New Worlds, Whitcoull’s, Paper Plus and independent bookstores.

ENDS

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