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03-05-16, 23:39
https://propertysoul.com/2016/05/03/bad-quality-properties/
Bad quality properties – a big surprise for home owners
May 3, 2016
Today my mother called about problems with her flat in Hong Kong again.
Since she collected the keys 15 years ago, she has done countless fixing and touch-up of defects in her apartment.
Two years ago, the neighbor downstairs complained about water seepage from her master toilet. She spent thousands of dollars to fix it. Next came the second toilet. Again they had to dig up the place, replace the pipes and redo the waterproof. Shortly after, there was complaint about leakage from the kitchen.
Last week the management office told her that water seepage from her balcony damaged the false ceiling of her neighbor’s unit downstairs. The neighbor just spent a considerable sum of money renovating their flat.
And this was only the water proofing problem.
She was really fed up with the endless fixing of defects. “This project is a government subsidized housing. Yet the building quality is so poor that the flat is full of defects.” She added, “If this is in Singapore, the government will never allow this to happen.”
How well are home buyers protected in Singapore?
I immediately kept quiet. I didn’t tell her that residents of The Seaview condominium just lost their case against the developer, the architect and the main contractor for $32 million worth of defects. The court decided that all three parties were not liable for the negligent acts of the independent contractors.
That implies, in the future if a developer and its main contractor refuse to rectify the defects of their projects, the buyers can only go after the many independent subcontractors one by one.
I also didn’t tell her that, in general Singaporeans are sophisticated customers and know their consumer rights, though they can react differently depending on situations.
We can spend $50 in a restaurant and complain about the bad service. We can ask for a full refund of a $500 electric appliance because it is not working properly. We can demand a discount off a $5,000 tour package because it doesn’t go to all the sightseeing places as promised.
But when we buy a $1.5 million property with a $1.2 million loan payable for the next 30 years, being one out of hundreds of owners in the same project, our bargaining power is very low.
In fact, most buyers have no idea what are noticeable or hidden defects, not to mention lodging complaints about them.
So when problems start to surface after the 1-year warranty period a few years later, many are shocked; some are angry; most have no clue; and the rest just wonder what happened.
Poor building quality affecting value of properties
In his article ‘Makeshift patching will not fix defects of Singapore housing market’ (The Business Times, April 21, 2016), Ku Swee Yong, CEO of Century 21 Singapore, mentioned that poor home construction quality is damaging the reputation and affecting the value of Singapore properties.
“Cases of building defects in new developments reported in the media include million-dollar homes such as The Sea View, RiverParc Residence, The Sail @ Marina Bay and The Coast in Sentosa Cove … Such a ruling (of The Seaview case) incentivises developers and main contractors to outsource more of their work. Coupled with the increasing incidences of shoddy workmanship and building defects, the finished quality of real estate might drop, as would its value.”
Mr. Ku’s emphasized the same fact in his new book Weathering A Property Downturn – Defensive Plays for Real Estate Investors:
“Today, we see higher incidences of residential properties completed with shoddy workmanship, even within prestigious developments in the luxury districts. Some defects are not obvious at the TOP handover and may remain hidden for more than a year. For example, sloppy waterproofing will lead to seepage or sewerage issues and poor installation of dry partition walls will reveal cracks after more than a year.”
“Bad workmanship is not just getting more apparent in private residential developments. Some of the recent incidents in public housing discussed in Parliament included: defects and design flaws in DBSS (Design, Build and Sell Scheme) flats such as Centrale 8, Pasir Ris One and Trivelis, and BTO (Build-To-Order) flats in Chua Chu Kang, Pungol and Bukit Panjang. Residents complained about overly narrow corridors, cracked walls, plaster slabs falling off the façade of HDB blocks, uneven flooring, leaks and overflowing toilets.”
Raising the standard of construction quality
I agree with Mr Ku that it’s time developers and contractors raised the standards of construction quality in Singapore. Boosting on state-of-the-art designs and congratulating each other on building awards are not going to earn the trust from home buyers.
“Perhaps we should postpone our building awards to be handed out only after the homes are completed, and have proven to provide comfort and enjoyment for the residents for more than 10 years. Government agencies, designers, architects, developers, builders and property managers need to raise their standards on build quality for investors and home buyers.”
Stop turning a deaf ear to the complaints from property buyers and investors. Stop giving developers and contractors excuses to shrink from their responsibilities. Stop allowing the bad sheep to continue damaging the reputation of the industry.
Otherwise, more and more buyers who have spent their hard-earned dollars and life savings in their homes will eventually find that they are buying flats built with shoddy workmanship, poor quality materials and sub-standard fittings. And Singapore properties will carry a bad name hereafter.
Raising public awareness about home defects
We never study about buying a home in school. Most people know nothing about defects in TOP units. Those buying resale units can’t tell the differences between a hairline crack and a structural crack.
Tan Wee Kwang, Director of Absolute Inspection, worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to inspect TOP units and resale properties in Singapore. Inspecting, lodging and rectifying home defects are labor-intensive and time-consuming. And there are simply too many poor quality projects, too many TOP units waiting to be inspected, too many defects found in a TOP unit, and too many owners who have no clue.
The only solution to solve this problem in the long-term is to educate home buyers and property investors about construction quality and building defects.
It is easy to open a fish steamboat restaurant, with customers making reservations weeks in advance for a meal to be fed with fish. But if we teach people how to fish and how to prepare the dishes, we feed them for a lifetime. They will in turn share the skills with others and promote fishing or cooking fish. This is the best way to create promote the art and raise industry standards of fishing and cooking.
Property Club Singapore (http://propertyclubsg.com)has the idea of running a workshop to educate home buyers and owners about defect inspection for long. But we must find an independent defect inspector who has no conflict of interest by not working with a developer, contractor, renovation company, property agency, etc. Wee Kwang from Absolute Inspection is a professional defect who has the passion, patience, honesty and integrity that I am looking for.
Finally, the Home Defects Inspection Hands-On Workshop (http://www.propertyclubsg.com/defects-inspection-workshop/)is ready. We will go together to visit a unit that just obtains its TOP. We will show the participants onsite what is shoddy workmanship, where are the defects, how to spot them, why they can go unnoticed, how to use different equipment for inspection, and what can be done to rectify the defects.
We will charge a fee a small percentage of what might cause the owner if a future defect pops up, and a fraction of the price of hiring a defect inspector, yet high enough to ensure that there won’t be any no-show for the workshop.
Whether you are buying a new or resale unit, an HDB or private property, if you are serious about identifying defects in properties, and want no surprises of hidden defects in your home years down the road, join us for the Home Defects Inspection Hands-On Workshop (http://www.propertyclubsg.com/defects-inspection-workshop/) this Saturday.
Bad quality properties – a big surprise for home owners
May 3, 2016
Today my mother called about problems with her flat in Hong Kong again.
Since she collected the keys 15 years ago, she has done countless fixing and touch-up of defects in her apartment.
Two years ago, the neighbor downstairs complained about water seepage from her master toilet. She spent thousands of dollars to fix it. Next came the second toilet. Again they had to dig up the place, replace the pipes and redo the waterproof. Shortly after, there was complaint about leakage from the kitchen.
Last week the management office told her that water seepage from her balcony damaged the false ceiling of her neighbor’s unit downstairs. The neighbor just spent a considerable sum of money renovating their flat.
And this was only the water proofing problem.
She was really fed up with the endless fixing of defects. “This project is a government subsidized housing. Yet the building quality is so poor that the flat is full of defects.” She added, “If this is in Singapore, the government will never allow this to happen.”
How well are home buyers protected in Singapore?
I immediately kept quiet. I didn’t tell her that residents of The Seaview condominium just lost their case against the developer, the architect and the main contractor for $32 million worth of defects. The court decided that all three parties were not liable for the negligent acts of the independent contractors.
That implies, in the future if a developer and its main contractor refuse to rectify the defects of their projects, the buyers can only go after the many independent subcontractors one by one.
I also didn’t tell her that, in general Singaporeans are sophisticated customers and know their consumer rights, though they can react differently depending on situations.
We can spend $50 in a restaurant and complain about the bad service. We can ask for a full refund of a $500 electric appliance because it is not working properly. We can demand a discount off a $5,000 tour package because it doesn’t go to all the sightseeing places as promised.
But when we buy a $1.5 million property with a $1.2 million loan payable for the next 30 years, being one out of hundreds of owners in the same project, our bargaining power is very low.
In fact, most buyers have no idea what are noticeable or hidden defects, not to mention lodging complaints about them.
So when problems start to surface after the 1-year warranty period a few years later, many are shocked; some are angry; most have no clue; and the rest just wonder what happened.
Poor building quality affecting value of properties
In his article ‘Makeshift patching will not fix defects of Singapore housing market’ (The Business Times, April 21, 2016), Ku Swee Yong, CEO of Century 21 Singapore, mentioned that poor home construction quality is damaging the reputation and affecting the value of Singapore properties.
“Cases of building defects in new developments reported in the media include million-dollar homes such as The Sea View, RiverParc Residence, The Sail @ Marina Bay and The Coast in Sentosa Cove … Such a ruling (of The Seaview case) incentivises developers and main contractors to outsource more of their work. Coupled with the increasing incidences of shoddy workmanship and building defects, the finished quality of real estate might drop, as would its value.”
Mr. Ku’s emphasized the same fact in his new book Weathering A Property Downturn – Defensive Plays for Real Estate Investors:
“Today, we see higher incidences of residential properties completed with shoddy workmanship, even within prestigious developments in the luxury districts. Some defects are not obvious at the TOP handover and may remain hidden for more than a year. For example, sloppy waterproofing will lead to seepage or sewerage issues and poor installation of dry partition walls will reveal cracks after more than a year.”
“Bad workmanship is not just getting more apparent in private residential developments. Some of the recent incidents in public housing discussed in Parliament included: defects and design flaws in DBSS (Design, Build and Sell Scheme) flats such as Centrale 8, Pasir Ris One and Trivelis, and BTO (Build-To-Order) flats in Chua Chu Kang, Pungol and Bukit Panjang. Residents complained about overly narrow corridors, cracked walls, plaster slabs falling off the façade of HDB blocks, uneven flooring, leaks and overflowing toilets.”
Raising the standard of construction quality
I agree with Mr Ku that it’s time developers and contractors raised the standards of construction quality in Singapore. Boosting on state-of-the-art designs and congratulating each other on building awards are not going to earn the trust from home buyers.
“Perhaps we should postpone our building awards to be handed out only after the homes are completed, and have proven to provide comfort and enjoyment for the residents for more than 10 years. Government agencies, designers, architects, developers, builders and property managers need to raise their standards on build quality for investors and home buyers.”
Stop turning a deaf ear to the complaints from property buyers and investors. Stop giving developers and contractors excuses to shrink from their responsibilities. Stop allowing the bad sheep to continue damaging the reputation of the industry.
Otherwise, more and more buyers who have spent their hard-earned dollars and life savings in their homes will eventually find that they are buying flats built with shoddy workmanship, poor quality materials and sub-standard fittings. And Singapore properties will carry a bad name hereafter.
Raising public awareness about home defects
We never study about buying a home in school. Most people know nothing about defects in TOP units. Those buying resale units can’t tell the differences between a hairline crack and a structural crack.
Tan Wee Kwang, Director of Absolute Inspection, worked 20 hours a day, 7 days a week to inspect TOP units and resale properties in Singapore. Inspecting, lodging and rectifying home defects are labor-intensive and time-consuming. And there are simply too many poor quality projects, too many TOP units waiting to be inspected, too many defects found in a TOP unit, and too many owners who have no clue.
The only solution to solve this problem in the long-term is to educate home buyers and property investors about construction quality and building defects.
It is easy to open a fish steamboat restaurant, with customers making reservations weeks in advance for a meal to be fed with fish. But if we teach people how to fish and how to prepare the dishes, we feed them for a lifetime. They will in turn share the skills with others and promote fishing or cooking fish. This is the best way to create promote the art and raise industry standards of fishing and cooking.
Property Club Singapore (http://propertyclubsg.com)has the idea of running a workshop to educate home buyers and owners about defect inspection for long. But we must find an independent defect inspector who has no conflict of interest by not working with a developer, contractor, renovation company, property agency, etc. Wee Kwang from Absolute Inspection is a professional defect who has the passion, patience, honesty and integrity that I am looking for.
Finally, the Home Defects Inspection Hands-On Workshop (http://www.propertyclubsg.com/defects-inspection-workshop/)is ready. We will go together to visit a unit that just obtains its TOP. We will show the participants onsite what is shoddy workmanship, where are the defects, how to spot them, why they can go unnoticed, how to use different equipment for inspection, and what can be done to rectify the defects.
We will charge a fee a small percentage of what might cause the owner if a future defect pops up, and a fraction of the price of hiring a defect inspector, yet high enough to ensure that there won’t be any no-show for the workshop.
Whether you are buying a new or resale unit, an HDB or private property, if you are serious about identifying defects in properties, and want no surprises of hidden defects in your home years down the road, join us for the Home Defects Inspection Hands-On Workshop (http://www.propertyclubsg.com/defects-inspection-workshop/) this Saturday.