Housing Shortage

[red750]

Another Aussie builder, Intellibuild, in WA has shut up shop leaving owners with half finished houses.

[facthunter]

All you have to do is give a fixed price quote and you're gone.  Nev

[Bruce Tuncks]

So what happens to the "owners" of the half-built houses?  What if they can use tools and want to finish them themselves?

Edited October 19, 2023 by Bruce Tuncks

[Bruce Tuncks]

It seems to me like a well-meaning idea gone wrong. The idea was clearly to protect buyers from unscrupulous builders, it was not intended to send honest ones broke.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I reckon onetrack has it right...  there should be an upper limit on what is claimable as a non-tax item.

It is ridiculous that with our benign climate, we have the world's biggest houses. Nev, if you visit, we will have a room for you in our shed-house. I would love for you to ride my ag motorbike around the farm. It's a 200 cc yamaha e bike and I'm thinking I'd like to be able to ride it into town.

[Bruce Tuncks]

The "e" stands for electric cos it has an electric starter as well as a kick-starter.

[facthunter]

WE just got given a Kawasaki Sherpa with hardly any K's on it .  Took it around the block a week ago. Nice low seat and electric start. I'm used to kick starting a Velo Venom. .  Nev

[onetrack]

Any builder carrying out more than $20,000 worth of work in W.A. must be registered as a builder and carry Home Indemnity Insurance to cover losses if they fail financially, die, or disappear.

 

https://www.commerce.wa.gov.au/publications/home-indemnity-insurance

 

However, as always, the system is run by insurance companies, and along with devious builders who plan to fail, the system is less than perfect, and has been criticised at length in the past.

 

https://www.hiainsurance.com.au/products/home-warranty-insurance/home-indemnity-wa

 

 

Edited October 20, 2023 by onetrack

[Jerry_Atrick]

8 hours ago, facthunter said:

All you have to do is give a fixed price quote and you're gone.  Nev

Yes.. Having plumbing work done at the minute (and the fellas are actually doing a great job). It is done on a fixed price quote, and I can tell you the builder has gone - laughing all the way to the bank!

Edited October 20, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[Jerry_Atrick]

6 hours ago, onetrack said:

However, as always, the system is run by insurance companies, and along with devious builders who plan to fail, the system is less than perfect, and has been criticised at length in the past.

There is a simple fix to this; a) require all registered builders to contribute to a central fund/insurance scheme that will complete the work when a builder fails; and make sure it is well advertised and people can easily verifty the builder they select is a current member of the scheme to stop the fly-by-nighters;

 

and b) Change limited liability to mean that and not no liability; Where it can be shown that directors have shifted assets from a company to personal holdings and where they have personal holdings shifted to others in order to defeat them being claimabale in a company failure, a) they should be able to be recoverable anyway from the recipient (with some exceptions, for example, where the recipient received those assets in genuine payment for a bona fide debt); and b) it should be a crominal offence (I think it is now, anyway_, and all future assets of the director/s should be able to have a claim on them in perpetuity until the equivalent value of the assets (taking into account inflation) is returned to the unsecured debotrs of the company/limited liability parntership.. and there shoudl be no time limit on how far back they can go before insolvency to avoid siphoming off assets.

 

Limited liability was developed, many hundreds of years ago to fister econcomic development through investments, and protect shareholders from being sent bankrupt by having to cover the debts of any failed company they invested in.. This made and makes sense for pure investors, however, society has moved on since those early times, and charlatans exploit the relativer antquity of the concept.

[facthunter]

It's more an issue when the Materials cost is a high% of the total and the job runs for a significant time. The builder has no control over the price increases which have become part and parcel of the scene lately.  Nev

[Jerry_Atrick]

That has been true, but prices have stabilised now and cost increases are predictable.

 

I am not saying it is the builders fault for the spate of bankruptcies.. it was the system that is less than perfect to deal with these sorts of problems, that I was offering a solution to.

 

Over here, we only use builders we know or are a member of the Federation of Master Builders - the latter requires their members to contribute to a fund to cover if they go broke.

 

The idea of reforming limited liability laws was to cover the charlatans that use them to rip off consumers (btw, it is not limited to the building indsutry).

Edited October 20, 2023 by Jerry_Atrick

[red750]

2 hours ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

Having plumbing work done at the minute

I had plumbing work done yesterday. A pipe had started leaking in the wall behind the kids bathroom basin. The plumber said they had to punch a hole in the brick wall to repair it, and make good the wall. He said the problem was the required pressure limiter had not been fitted at the meter, so he also fitted one. There was also a problem with the toilet in the ensuite. It was about 50 years old. The cistern was single flush and had come detached from the wall. So a new bowl and cistern suite were required. With pensioner discount, just under $2500. The supervisor at the Men's Shed thought it would have been a lot more.

[Jerry_Atrick]

That is sort of good news, Peter... if they are not ripping you off, excellent. I am not going to say what they are charging me, and I will post photos of the works done (not sure if I have before phots). Although I am happy with the work they have done, I know they are charging for it. Another plumber who is a friend at the pub throught the price was far, but a little on the hiigh side including the replacement of the boiler.. The boiler isn't being replaceed - and this place reqiures an industrial sized boiler...

[red750]

Luxury home builer Dome Constructions forced into lquidation.

[onetrack]

That is actually Dome Building Projects that has gone under. There's a business called Dome Constructions, they build industrial Dome Shelters, and they're doing very nicely, thank you.

 

Edited October 21, 2023 by onetrack

[old man emu]

Isn't the Building and Construction industry supposed to be one of the forces driving our Economy? Lok what that industry has done for China - scores of multi-storey empty shells and thousands of families owning nothing but empty promises.

 

I think it is ridiculous that the Government was calling for more apprentices in the Building and Construction industry, but you have to import shearers from overseas because there is not enough effort made here to train our own. I use shearers as an example, but it is quite simple to replace that word with the name of so many other trades. 

 

If you look at the area that is known as the City of Liverpool in NSW, you will see vast amounts of building and construction. However, the things being constructed are only warehouses. We are fantastic at building warehouses, but bloody useless at making things to put in them. 

 

If we allow ourselves to be drawn into an Asian/Pacific conflict with China, the first  Aussie victim will be the $2 shops, unless the Indians decide to take on that sort of production. But seriously, in the event of a conflict with China that would curtail shipping from Asia, we will lose our supplies of so many processed foodstuffs such as fish and vegetables. Take a look at a can of tuna. It has been packed either in Thailand or Vietnam. I suppose if we do lose Asia as a source of seafood, we can always fall back to eating Western Australian lobster, and tuna caught in our territorial waters. Hooray! SAFCOL will be revived!

 

 

[nomadpete]

Gee thanks for sending me down Depression Lane OME

 

We are a banana Republic. Well, if Mines are bananas.

 

Sad to say, I too feel greatly frustrated by the lack of foresight shown by our "leaders" who are leaders in name only.

 

So much potential, so little benefit to the people.

Edited October 21, 2023 by nomadpete

[Bruce Tuncks]

Shearers are costing the farmer more than he gets for the wool around here, with meat sheep. This is a new thing, and old habits die slowly.

And here's one for jerry... there was a farm "consultant" who was ripping off farmers. Just before he went broke, he had a divorce and she got all the assets, so there was none left for the dudded farmers. ( I don't think he deliberately set out to rip them off, I thought he decided he was smart enough to invest their money at high rates and pay them at the lower rate of safe investment, all the while pretending that the money was invested at the low rate.)

I was always suspicious of the divorce, but in admiration of how clever an idea it was.

[nomadpete]

4 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

I was always suspicious of the divorce, but in admiration of how clever an idea it was.

Sometimes yhe wife is more cunning than the husband.

 

Edit.....

This is the Housing Shortage thread.

 

I think the husband experienced sudden housing shortage - like a cyclone, when she leaves, she takes the house!

Edited October 21, 2023 by nomadpete

[Bruce Tuncks]

Well wherever he got to live, it was better than the jail he avoided.

I wonder if he ever got back with the now-rich wife...

[nomadpete]

I see news reports confusion about why increasing numbers of landlords are selling up their rental properties.

 

I once had a couple of modest rentals. Like others, I got out of it because it was too hard to break even. It was simply not a good business  proposition. Running costs of rental properties are always higher than owned homes.

Rental properties are required to have regular costly certifications that home owners do not have to do. Many renters treat the property poorly, resulting in costly maintenance, and untenantable periods of no income.

 

So there will be fewer rental properties in the renters market.

[Bruce Tuncks]

I agree with that Nomad, and many years ago when I was an accidental landlord, I found it out to my cost.

One thing that I should have forseen was how the agent would see lots more of the tenants than the owners, and come to take their side.

[old man emu]

Here's a problem for landlords: the current generation of young families are either too busy living, or have no pride in their home, despite its being owned by someone else.

 

I'm somewhat miffed with my son and D-i-L. This weekend they have taken off to spend it with other members of the kids' soccer team at an out of season get together. They have two large dogs, about the size of adult rams. The dogs have destroyed the grass adjacent to the back patio and as a result, it was covered in fine dirt, which can blow everywhere. I spent the afternoon on Saturday scrubbing and hosing the patio floor to bring it back to close to the way I had it when I lived here. I am going to have to add another chore to the boys' list and make them use the blower on the patio at least once a week to keep it in a suitable condition to use over summer. 

 

But what can one say? I'll get thanked for doing it, but I know in their minds its a case of, "There's Dad and his OCD at work".

[facthunter]

A lot of people don't look after what THEY own, let alone anybody elses.  Give and take means YOU give , THEY take. You're mad it you even LEND stuff. Land lords are considered innately greedy. Bad tenants are like a nightmare you never wake from.  Nev