Strata Building Defects in the Real World

By the time we hear about the problems of strata building defects they have been sanitised by the investigation, claim and legal processes.

Long expert reports quote building code provisions and specification details when describing what's wrong with the building, insurance claim forms summarise defects in tables and bulleted lists, legal documents plead breaches of statutes, contracts and tortious principles and Court judgements pronounce the law (one way or another).  It's all important but it's also quite divorced from the reality of building defects for strata owners.

For them building defects are very obvious, very immediate and very real.

When there's water penetration it's coming into living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms.  Dripping onto things, ruining carpets and curtains, staining the walls and ceilings and creating damp smells and mould.  Owners have to mop up the wet mess, move things out of harms, put buckets and towels out and wait for dry weather to arrive to relieve the situation.  Seen this soggy mess in your apartment before?

When walls crack and render de-laminates, it's happening in the corridors and owners walk on the fallen plaster.  Do any of these images look familiar to you? 

When balcony railings loosen or glass balustrades explode they cause falling dangers on owners' balconies and the glass rains down on other owners and people in the street.  And, all of a sudden balconies become unsightly and unusable.

Some building defects are less obvious but more sinister like missing or defective fire dampers, non fire rated doors and inadequate fire separation between apartments. Since no-one can see that these essential fire safety measures are not there or simply don't work, in these cases strata owners might just find out about the building defects after it's too late.

So, whilst we all need to work on the details (legal, technical, strategic and political) to improve the quality of new strata buildings and get owners redress when there are defects,  let's not forget that the reality for strata owners with building defects is much more serious and disruptive than the details and outcomes suggest.

Getting the money to fix water leaks after a few years of suffering from them is not really enough compensation.   Finally having your strata building fire safety compliant doesn't make up completely for the fact that owners and residents have been living in danger. And, being able to safely use your balcony does very little to make up for the inconvenience of not be able to use it and the reduced amenity of the apartment.  If compensation for those things were included in building defect claims they'd be a lot bigger.

And, maybe that's one reason why builders and developers are not taking building defects seriously enough ... they're simply not that exposed to real damages claims.  Paying to fix inadequately performed building work many years after it was done is hardly a serious penalty to anyone.  After all, they saved the money on building in the first place and enjoyed the profits from it ever since.

Which leads me to think that the sooner strata owners begin trying to claim the non-repair losses that building defects cause, the sooner everyone will pay more attention to this serious problem.

I'm currently working with a few groups of Australian strata owners to get redress about their building defects and am interested to hear from others who want to do more about their building defects too.



Francesco ...