Seen a few people on here asking about Summit Homes Pokeno, as a first home...

We have had the same sort of problems with ecosmart homes as this out in glenbrook. two years and still no home ready. all the homes around the area are going up sooo fast and countless have been finished since we started in 2020. they told us the same thing “we got a good price” “those houses costed more” “youve made money” it actually blows my mind how common companies are treating their clients like this! its disgusting. Im sorry that you are going through this! so hard to know what to do. we are now looking at seeing if our lawyer can get us out of the final instalment and ccc and we take over the build completely because there is no end in site!

Hi Danielle, Sorry to hear of your build, it seems that some in the building industry are really taking the piss at the moment because of the demand but you only need to read the newspaper to find some companies are already folding because they over stretched themselves in the boom and won’t be able to make ends meet in the lull and that tale is as old as time. If you want to extricate yourselves from your current builders and get your lawyer to draft a proposal for taking over the build yourselves to the CCC might I recommend that you employ a building forensic specialist first? They will go over your build with a fine tooth comb and find every issue that is either not to the plans, not to the current building code and anything that is of poor workmanship or poor quality materials and they will give you a detailed and very easy to understand report about exactly what needs finishing and to a decent standard to CCC. Once you have that report your lawyer will be better equipped to make demands. If you want a monetary figure to go with that you can easily submit the report to a quantity surveyor who will give you up to date figures on materials and labour for each issue the building specialist highlights. You’re probably thinking it’ll cost too much and you may be right, our building specialist and quantity surveyor cost us just under $4k in total and that was as of March this year. But they identified $89k’s worth of issues that needed rectifying when we had only managed to identify $45k, we had no idea there was a problem until it was pointed out to us so money very well spent we think. And yes, we got every penny of it too. These reports also carry a lot of weight in the legal system so if it turns out that this is direction you may be headed (I sincerely hope not but you never know) then almost all of your due diligence would have already been done. Our building forensic specialist was Noel Jellyman and he is based in Hamilton and nothing escapes is eye, he is a marvel and knows his stuff and he can recommend a quantity surveyor too if that is what you want to do. You can always run this all by your lawyer but we will never regret doing this first or we would have sold ourselves short by over $40k. We’ve been exactly where you are now and we wasted three years trying to get $45k refunded to remediate/finish work so we could get a CCC, but when we employed the right people to help it took only 3 months and we got twice the amount. As I said , run it past your lawyer and I hope it all works well for you going forwar, please let us know how you get on.

Hi Danielle, Since both are about problems with Ecosmart, I assume it was you that wrote twice on 8/10/22. When I responded on 9/10/22 I was looking more at the ‘poor progress/delayed completion’ aspect, as I think this is a very common problem on this blog. Which I think would be much less of a problem (although of course never zero), if people were more insistent on decent Contract conditions regarding completion date (ie contract period), provisions for time extension when reasonably justified, and ideally the Liquidated Damages a builder should pay you if he fails to complete on time. Having said that, I must praise MJ’s excellent suggestions on a process for dealing with the other aspect, which is faulty or unsatisfactory workmanship. When our job went wrong (ie builder went into liquidation) I did not need to do this, as the builder had almost welcomed me visiting the Site, and discussing the work. So workmanship up to that time was actually very good. But MJ has explained (obviously from bitter experience), in a very clear way, the advantages of getting experts involved, and recording everything. It’s a great idea to do this, as soon as you start having this kind of problem. But based on the cost he mentions, I would say that for people who are not experienced in building it would be worth considering getting this kind of expertise on board from day one. Even $10K would be cheap, if it reduces the risk of problems occurring in the first place. This is why, on large Government projects, the Client (eg NZTA) has almost as many people on Site checking progress and workmanship, as the Contractor has supervising the construction. A lot better to make sure things are done right, than try to put them right later. (Not always successful of course, but that’s life in the construction game.) Of course, making sure that the Contract allows these people to have adequate Site access. (While making clear, it’s not to give instructions to people working on Site, but just to observe what’s going on, on your behalf.) If the builder resists this, it probably means you should be cautious about dealing with him.

I forgot to mention , do not rely on your local council to find instances of poor workmanship and faulty building products they are only contracted to find faults with the building code and issues of non compliance with your consented building plans, and even in this they very well could miss something but you will never be able to make them liable if they do so channel your anger at the building company and this will save you a lot of money and stress.

Hi Ecosmart homes’ director has a bit of a history. I think it’s the same as NZfirst homes. We nearly signed up for one of their builds in Helensville. Check out the stories from 2020.