Suing your builder

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90210

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I reside at a small housing development of 50 dwellings in Dublin. At a local meeting with the residents we discovered that the builder has had some major design and workmanship faults with drainage on the development.



The costs of this could be astronomical to repair, apparently there is a great deal of unfinished work and the management company are doing nothing.

To be honest they are useless, so has anyone here been in the same position.

Pushing the builder and the management company is one thing however if all this fails what is the cut off point, suing the builder?
 
How do you know there are major design and workmanship flaws? Have you commissioned an engineers report? ? If not, consider doing so- however before you decide on which one, have a chat with the solicitor you would choose to represent you should it come to it- they will advise on the best engineer from a litigation point of view ( i.e. an engineer who is experienced in giving reports for a possible action and who has relevant court experience). Get them to advise on the cost of repair. If the fault lies in design rather than workmanship you may have to join the engineer or architect who was involved in the design of the estate as well as the builder. Also did you get home bond protection? Was there a bond given to the local authority for the completion of the estate and services by the developer as part of the planning? Is the builder a 'mark' ?

BTW you say the management company is 'useless- but its the residents that run the management company, so put your self forward for election, get the residents together and do something about it- sooner rather than later.
 
We have organised an Engineering Company to report on all the issues whether they be Structural or Foundation or Design etc for the Common Zones. So we are waiting on their feedback, basically the complex has major faults one being drainage.

As far as I know the local authority have not taken over the complex as the builder still remains in 2 dwellings, so no bond has been give to the council as yet.

But I would say when these are sold he will be out of there ...but their is a Home Bond with the property.



The builder is a limited Company so as far as a mark for damages go I could not say at this point. But he does have another development in the pipeline which presumably would have no chance of selling if proceedings where issued against the company.



The Mge Company are no help at all and basically the Res Committee has taken the problem of the Builders Handover on, we cannot get another Mge Company in at this stage as we have too many problems for them to deal with. We found them to be too cosy with the builder and very complacent (blundering) with spending and organisation.



All in all, is it your experience that the Threat of Legal Action is enough to get things moving and if not we all go to the High Court, looking at 50K plus on legal just for us.
 
Are you talking about a management company or managing agents? Because if it's agents, check the terms of the contract with them and try to dismiss them or indeed if they have failed to fulfill the terms of their contract, they should also be threatened with action.

Usually in developements there is a clause in the planning permission that the builder has to enter an insurance bond for a fairly substantial sum which is a guarantee for the satisfactory completion of the estate- so check this out, this bond should be renewed until the estate is complete. Your solicitor will have been given details of this bond when you purchased the house. Inform the council of the situation and they can also take action, which may mean you wont have to.

It looks like you're in a good position as this insurance bond is probably in place, and you have the additional protection of homebond. I cant say whether the threat of legal action will suffice, every situation and every developer is different. The most important thing to do is to get appropriate engineering and legal advice and know where the legal and engineering costs are going to come from- i.e. will you be able to recoup them.
 
Very sound advice from Vanilla!

In the estate next to mine, the residents also discovered problems with the drainage system (some 6 years after the 1st phase was completed) and contacted the council.

The council are holding the builder's bond, some E600,000, and have informed the builder that they will not return it until the necessary work has been carried out.
 
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