Hi everyone. I would love to get some more advice, the more the better.
We are currently building a new home in Regional Victoria. This was our first home ever after being in the country for a couple of years. We thought we did enough research to go in with a plan, however, we are now in a potential situation that we are trying to avoid. The builder seemed to have had a very good history, but recently the complaints are piling up with dodgy contractors and build defects. They promised to fix these issues and some clients are still waiting months after moving in, and they are simply being ignored and treated like absolute garbage. Some of the people have started a formal complaints process with VCAT etc, which we will likely do at the end of the process in any case as they are using unethical practices.
From now until the final handover process, we want to ensure we protect our investment and get what we paid for. We only have the final progress payment left. So far they are mostly helpful, as essentially, they are after their final payment, which is why they seemed to pretty responsive to us still. There are lots of rumours about how they are still in business, which we cannot confirm at this stage.
Our first plan of attack is to talk with other local people who had issues to take note of what types of issues they were and get a general idea of what to look for as early as possible. We are also now asking for weekly inspections as we are now at the point where all the final bits and pieces are going in. All good, however, when defects are found we don't have any guarantee that they will be attended too. Legally, they can offer us an occupancy certificate, as defects will not stop us from living in the space, so it does not seem that withholding payments will be an option. The types of defects does not seem to be of a major structural nature. We are trying to get some legal advice as well.
What would you do if you found yourself in this situation?
Happy to provide more info if needed but for now I would not want to make the name of the company public at this stage.
Why don't you want to name them? If you plan on withholding it as "leverage" does that mean you are asking for help here but you don't want to help anyone else by warning them?