November 2008

Government grants, falling rates and economic woes - there are a lot of pitfalls in the property game, writes David Potts on Fairfax’s Business Day.
Potts asks the question many of us might ask in these uncertain times: “If you already own your home and want to upgrade, is renovating or buying the best option?”
“The [...]

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Changes to strengthen consumer protection under the Home Warranty Insurance scheme were passed by the NSW Legislative Council on November 12, “giving consumers an additional trigger to lodge insurance claims for defective or incomplete building work,” Fair Trading Minister Virginia Judge said.
Ms Judge said the Amendments represented the Government’s latest reform to home warranty insurance, [...]

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Tonight I’ve been searching a few forums. A moment ago I read this amusing (but also awful) post from Web Child blogger Jayne Kearney.
She writes:
“Day One of our renovations and I have a question: what kind of fresh hell is this?
I am simply not a renovator and never thought I would be. All I [...]

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The Rudd Government is gambling that doubling the first-home owners grant for established dwellings, and trebling it for new homes, will tilt the playing field back towards new homes. However this $1.5 billion property market kickstart risks reviving the inner city ahead of the outer suburbs, and the renovations business ahead of new home building, [...]

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So you’ve finally managed to liquidate your builder so that you can claim on your HOW insurance. Now you need to jump through a whole lot of other hoops as you battle your insurer (and bureaucracy).
After my posts on HOW earlier in the week, I received an email from Rob. For six years he’s been [...]

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In case you haven’t yet been devastated by the weak recommendations of the recently tabled Last Resort Home Builders Warranty Insurance Senate Inquiry report (and my disgust has been outlined in other posts today), here they are:
1. The committee recommends that all parties receive a copy of the insurance certificate, summary of product and dispute [...]

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The Last Resort Home Builders Warranty Insurance Senate Inquiry report fails to recommend the far-reaching makeover of a system that is expensive, mandatory and close to useless.
So what does HOW cover? Not a lot.
In my book The Renovator’s Survival Guide I talk about the farcical nature of our mandatory Home Warranty insurance system, applicable in [...]

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The Last Resort Home Builders Warranty Insurance Senate Inquiry report was tabled this week. It’s helped me see the light. All this time I was thinking that HOW was an expensive impost that helps only a tiny minority of consumers leaving the rest of us without accessible protection. Now I see it will be Sunny [...]

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While this renovator’s builder refuses (and seems unable) to fix her leaking deck, getting another builder to fix the problem would void her HOW insurance. Authorities say she needs to FORCE him to fix it.
In The Renovator’s Survival Guide I wrote about my friend Margaret, whose builder stealthily altered clauses in the contract after it [...]

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