Thinking of Building or Renovating your home? Then this is definitely relevant to you.

The recent statistics released by NSW Department of Fair Trading in September of this year show that there is still a large amount of complaints being lodged against builders in NSW and majority of the complaints are about poor workmanship.

We’ve all heard stories somewhere down line whether it be from our friends or seen it on Facebook about how the builder has done a shoddy job and they won’t come back to fix it.

So what can you do to prevent this happening to you? It all starts with your contract. Make sure you build in a clause which allows you to do regular quality inspections. This will also need to state that it will require your sign off before moving on to the next stage.

If you’re not sure what’s acceptable or not, get a second opinion. Pay a project manager to do spot inspections, it will cost you a fee but remember this little investment up front can save you thousands of dollars of trying to fix it later.

Another option is build in a monetary retention with your builder… they’re not going to like this but you will soon weed out the ones who aren’t too confident on their quality record. Make it for a reasonable amount of money and for a reasonable amount of time.

Stay on top of it, if you are going to manage the job yourself (which I don’t generally recommend) make sure you stand your ground and get what you are paying for.

The biggest key is to be fair and reasonable with your builder. Remember that they have a big job and a lot of responsibility as well so keep the communication lines open early. You will get a more effective response if you approach it early rather than later.

The statistics are broken down as follows: