NHBC Cover for defective wall

[Willow11]

I have got a buy to let property in Sutton in Surrey. The property is a one bedroomed ground floor flat built by Bellway in 2004. The flat effectively has three exterior walls as to each side of the flat is a bike shed storage area and a bin storage area to the other side.

My tenants whoever they are have experienced a persistant mould & damp problem in the bedroom area first observed in 2007 which I had originally put down to lifestyle (i.e. lack of ventilation, cleaning and drying clothes which creates condensation etc.)

As this problem has been persitent. I organised a mould survey to be carried out by a specialist, who has stated that the level of water in the bottom of one of the exterior wall which backs on to the binstore is at 62-87% when measured by a protimetre and said that the route cause due to ingress of water. Looking at the construction of the bin storage wall which effectively forms an outside wall and backs onto my bed room it appears that it is constructed out of concrete blocks (formerly called breeze blocks.)

I am sure that where concrete blocks are used to construct external walls that there should be a layer of cladding, waterproofing or rendering to weather and water proof the wall. Would any one know if this is the case and if this could possibly be the cause of my damp wall there looks to be a line in the blocks which could be a water mark running horizontally where it looks like thev water had risen

Also as the property was only built in 2004, I have some NHBC cover until 2014, i am just trying to progess an NHBC claim as surely the lack of rendering should have beeen picked up at the build stage and wall is now defective. How likely am I going to be in making a successfull claim and how long will it take?

Any help would be much appreciated on this?

[RPLR]

I suggest you read the NHBC policy and then speak with NHBC. In the noirmal course of events I would expect NHBC to cover as you are out of the builder's 2-year indemnity period and the NHBC policy should be for 10 years.

There are various damp proofing tanking etc methods. Your local authority's building control department ought to have drawings and details of the requirements upon the developer/builder.

The defect could be a failure in materials and/or construction and/or result from non-compliance with the building regulations.

You might care to consult our website rplr.co.uk to see how we might be able to help if you get no change out of NHBC.

[NewHomeExpert]

This may not be covered by the NHBC Warranty as it is not a structural defect. (Years 3 to 10)
However, the mould represents a health hazard and it looks like the NHBC standards have not been followed.

Good luck with your claim.

[laura johnson]

I bought a house from Taylor Wimpey and NHBC signed the ok on the cavity wall insulation on a blank worksheet, NHBC does not owe the buyer a duty of care only the builder, the NHBC certificate is in the name of the builder. Their certificate is not worth the paper is written on.

Taylor Wimpey spent 4 years denying the facts after the destructive work I carried out and I took them to Court and I won the judge stated that the job they do is SHABBY.

Also all the electrical certificate and insulation certificate are false it is a lying company who does not care about their customer and has no pride in what they do and they will never repair what is wrong because in fact they do not know what they are doing. Do not buy a new house and let alone one from Taylor Wimpey.

You can lose your house if there is some major structural problem and it affects its value. The mortgage has the rgiht to ask you to do the remeidal work within s set time limit and if you do not they can repossess.

Taylor Wimpey is a lying company and Watchdog already reported on it and what they deserve is to go bankrupt.

[NewHomeExpert]

Why do these housebuilders continue to:
1) Build poor quality homes and
2) When problems exist, not attend to them with a degree of urgency.

We now need legislation to force house builders to get independant inspections, not just warranty and building control inspections.

It amazes me that people are still buying new homes!

[Snaggedout]

From your description it sounds like you have a problem with rising or penetrating dampness.

If so, it is covered by your NHBC warranty.

Contrary to the comments of other contributors the NHBC policy is written in favour of the homeowner, your are the insured not the builder. If NHBC turn down your claim you can ask to have it referred to the Financial Ombudsman Service. NHBC will tell your this if they turn your claim down. It costs you nothing to ask for the claim to be referred to FOS but NHBC have to pay for the review and to abide by the FOS decision.

NewHomeExpert asks why people still keep buying new homes. Take a look at the customer satisfaction survey on the Home Builders Federation website. They publish results of a survey carried out independently by NHBC of major house builders customers. The last published results show that 88% of new buyers would recommend their builder, up from 75% in 2005 when the results were first published.

[NewHomeExpert]

What Snaggedout doesnt say is that just 21% of the total 97,000 private sector new homes uilt in the 12-month survey period in for the HBF survey 2011 actually received a survey.
Of those that did just 55% returned them.
This is hardly represenatative and no one within the house building industry be it HBF, NHBC or the house builders should be flying flags saying we are five-star builders and that new homes are a good quality!

It is more like 88% of the 55% who filled in the form were "satisfied" not 88% of all new homeowners as implied.

In addition, just because some buyers would "recommend their builder" or are "satisfied" at 8 weeks doesn't necessarily mean they would still feel the same at 9 months or later!

[Snaggedout]

Bit tiresome to have to keep correcting mis-statements but I'll just stick to correcting a lack of understanding about statistics.

A response rate of 55% is highly significant and gives results with a high degree of confidence. In non-technical language, theyre right.

Yep, the high levels of satisfaction at 8 weeks, might not be reflected at 9 months or 12 months or even two years. Might be higher, might be lower but they can't be compared because you're measuring different things.

[NewHomeExpert]

Originally Posted by Snaggedout

Bit tiresome to have to keep correcting mis-statements but I'll just stick to correcting a lack of understanding about statistics.

A response rate of 55% is highly significant and gives results with a high degree of confidence. In non-technical language, theyre right.

Yep, the high levels of satisfaction at 8 weeks, might not be reflected at 9 months or 12 months or even two years. Might be higher, might be lower but they can't be compared because you're measuring different things.

If you have 100 new homes.
Only 38 of these are sent a survey.
Of these only 55% complete and send it back.
That means the survey results are for just 21 new homes out of the original 100.
- and that is just for the Private sector new homes.

When the NHBC rmake public the individual house builder's 9 month survey results then we may know what the real picture is. until then the industry weighted results are all we have.

If everyone was really happy with their new home then this forum would be empty, and not full of posts about serious defects, subsidence and dissatisfaction with house builders service and customer care.

[Snaggedout]

My final words on this one as I guess other readers might be getting bored with the exchanges.

The NHBC Annual Review for for 2010/11 reports that around 50,000 new home owners were surveyed. Their 2011 Statistics Review gives 72,500 private sector completions for 2010, let's call that 75,000 to ease the arithmetic. In other words 2/3 of all private onwners were sent survey forms. Given that the survey doesn't run in Northern Ireland and that investor buyers aren't surveyed (because they tend to be absent owners, buy on price and are less interested in customer satisfaction issues) I'd say that a damn good slug of buyers were sent the survey form. And no matter how the figures are twisted, a 55% response rate would give a representative sample ( with a slight negative bias due the type of survey - it's a self completion survey and those more negatively inclined are more likely to respond). If MORI can predict General Election results involving millions of votes by surveying a few thousand of them I'd be pretty confident in the results of the homeowner survey.

Of course tenants of social housing aren't surveyed, they don't get involved in the buying process and their after sales service is provided by their landlord not the builder.

Surveying at different times (and a question set that is not the same, as is the case with the NHBC 8 week and 9 month survey) will give different results. It's not quite like comparing apples with pears, but its at least like trying to compare different types of apples. Interestingly the effect of parking provision on depressing the customer satisfaction result at 9 months is shown in the NHBC Foundation Note on Car Parking on New Housing Developments ( the note also gives some other details of the 9 months survey).

If you still don't hold much truck with the NHBC survey, take a look at the OFT's rather comprehensive study of the housebuilding industry - Homebuilding in the UK. It includes a customer satisfaction survey. The methodology is different ( they used face to face interviews that tend to give better results) and it wasn't properly weighted to account for the proportion of customers interviewed who had bought from major house builders (in other words it was skewed towards smaller housebuilders) but here is a quote from the summary:
" The OFT survey of new homebuyers indicates slightly higher satisfaction with the quality of new homes than in other Homebuilding surveys..."

And finally, I asked in another thread how many homeowners who had claimed against the NHBC and had their claim turned down had appealed to the Financial Ombudsman, who can overturn insurers decisions. The answer is not easy to find but it is in the OFT study. In 2006/07 just 41 cases were submitted and 34 of those were settled in favour of NHBC. And that really is my final word on this subject!

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