More Strata Defects Exposed

There's been a lot of discussion about building defects in strata buildings in NSW recently.

Last month the developers and NSW Minister said that it was a 'beat up' by the lawyers.  And, now the City Futures Research Centre has published some survey results that suggest that over 75% of strata buildings have experienced defects.

The latest information has been reported in this Sydney Morning Herald article and has surprised many.  But, it's no surprise to me having experienced these things first hand for more than 20 years.  

Whether it's a minor fault in the building or there's water leaks that make apartments uninhabitable, it seems that most new strata buildings have problems and the owners struggle to get their problems addressed.  And, without doing something I expect things will only get worse until every new building suffers from unresolved defects.  I'm not the only person who thinks this as this opinion piece in the Sydney Morning Herald also suggests.

I also think that things have now reached the point where it hardly matters whose fault it is and why it happens.  After all, if we're serious about putting people into high density buildings, we need to make them decent and liveable (and fix them when they are not).

That probably means ensuring the following things -

• That the design and details for new buildings have meet higher quality standards
• Better and more frequent scrutiny of building construction to ensure compliance
• Clearer accountability of builders and developer for defects
• Improved building handover mechanisms to force defect issues to be resolved 
• The creation of improved strata corporation (and owner) rights have to get defects fixed
• Home Building Insurance needs to be the fall back when the system fails

Lets see what happens next.


Francesco ...