Caveat emptor or Householder Bailout

rodento

Anyone want to guess whats going to happen with all the pyrite and other bad builds over the last 10 years, is it going to be the case of another governmnet bailout or just a case of buyer beware

Benny_Cake

rodento wrote: »

Anyone want to guess whats going to happen with all the pyrite and other bad builds over the last 10 years, is it going to be the case of another governmnet bailout or just a case of buyer beware

I'm no expert but in the case of pyrite it seems unfair to expect any buyer to be aware of it as an issue-even testing for it involves considerable work I understand.Homebond must be made to cough up for this.

rodento

If homebuild go bust and it may well be another levy on insurance

kippy

One really has to wonder what actually happened with regulation in this country in the past ten years. Not just in the financial sector but also in the building regulations/constructions side of things.

There is a case currently ongoing between homebond and the suppliers of the material (I believe). There are a number of resultant outcomes from this.

One would HOPE that if homebond cannot pass the cost onto the supplier, homebond themselves should cover the costs to the house owners. I mean, what is the point of being an insurer if you cannot cover your liabilities. It would be interesting to delve into the accounts of homebond, I mean surely they would have to have enough to cover this. If not they, the financial regulator and a number of other groups of people have a lot to answer for.
No more than the other complete and utter failures in regulation that have happened here in the past few years.
I mean Quinn, should never have been ALLOWED get to the stage it has gotten to. Simple as that. Some one or group has seriously dropped the ball in that instance, most likely any one of a number of regulators/audit groups responsible in that area.
And as for this "emergency insurance fund" - it obvsiously isnt big enough. Insurance and financial organisations made massive profits in the "good times" - why werent some of these profits funneled into these emergency funds so that the citizen doesnt pick up the tab when things go t1ts up at a time when the citizen is already squeezed big time

rodento

kippy wrote: »

One really has to wonder what actually happened with regulation in this country in the past ten years. Not just in the financial sector but also in the building regulations/constructions side of things.

There is a case currently ongoing between homebond and the suppliers of the material (I believe). There are a number of resultant outcomes from this.

One would HOPE that if homebond cannot pass the cost onto the supplier, homebond themselves should cover the costs to the house owners. I mean, what is the point of being an insurer if you cannot cover your liabilities. It would be interesting to delve into the accounts of homebond, I mean surely they would have to have enough to cover this. If not they, the financial regulator and a number of other groups of people have a lot to answer for.
No more than the other complete and utter failures in regulation that have happened here in the past few years.
I mean Quinn, should never have been ALLOWED get to the stage it has gotten to. Simple as that. Some one or group has seriously dropped the ball in that instance, most likely any one of a number of regulators/audit groups responsible in that area.
And as for this "emergency insurance fund" - it obvsiously isnt big enough. Insurance and financial organisations made massive profits in the "good times" - why werent some of these profits funneled into these emergency funds so that the citizen doesnt pick up the tab when things go t1ts up at a time when the citizen is already squeezed big time

Do you have any idea how big the problem is:eek:

kippy

rodento wrote: »

Do you have any idea how big the problem is:eek:

The pyrite problem?
I dont think anyone knows the final cost of it. I've seen figures of around 11 million to sort it out in 124 houses, so the final cost will depend on how many houses are effected in the country.
It is big.
That doesn't however negate any of the points I have made above.

rodento

In 2010 they estimated at least 20000 houses

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/devastating-pyrite-epidemic-hits-20000-newly-built-houses-2073508.html

Most be way more now

kippy

rodento wrote: »

In 2010 they estimated at least 20000 houses

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/devastating-pyrite-epidemic-hits-20000-newly-built-houses-2073508.html

Most be way more now

Hmm.
One has to wonder, with all the regulatory bodies, building requirements and specifications etc, how and why there are so many effected buildings.....
No doubt we'll learn nothing from it,

ArmaniJeanss

kippy wrote: »

One would HOPE that if homebond cannot pass the cost onto the supplier, homebond themselves should cover the costs to the house owners. I mean, what is the point of being an insurer if you cannot cover your liabilities. It would be interesting to delve into the accounts of homebond, I mean surely they would have to have enough to cover this.

Have been to a few pyrite meetings and it appears that Homebond worked on the basis of one/two houses per estate as the bond, i.e if there were 500 on an estate then they put enough in the bond to cover a major structural defect in 2 houses which required substantial rebuilding (so say 250K put aside in such an estate).
However you might have 50 houses in the estate with a pyrite problem at 40K a fix which = 2M, so already you have a major deficit.

Slideshowbob

How can Homebond not honour this? What is the purpose of this insurance otherwise?

thebman

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

Have been to a few pyrite meetings and it appears that Homebond worked on the basis of one/two houses per estate as the bond, i.e if there were 500 on an estate then they put enough in the bond to cover a major structural defect in 2 houses which required substantial rebuilding (so say 250K put aside in such an estate).
However you might have 50 houses in the estate with a pyrite problem at 40K a fix which = 2M, so already you have a major deficit.

yeah but if it is two houses per estate then they are also estates with no issues whatsoever.

It is a matter of how many houses it can cover. It probably can't cover them all (as in can't).

A lot of these problems were known about for years during and prior to the boom with our building regulations with changes supposed to be introduced to legislation for years but sadly political lobbying probably stopped it happening.

At some point, people are just going to have to accept that our current way of doing things just doesn't work and we need political reform. Any day now I'm sure ...

ArmaniJeanss

Slideshowbob wrote: »

How can Homebond not honour this? What is the purpose of this insurance otherwise?

HB took a high court case, and the judges decision was that it was essentially the fault of the quarry, so it comes down to the quarry insurance (busto company, questions over what cover they have).

The judge found that the builders had acted in good faith, they ordered landfill from a licensed quarry and used it to build perfectly designed houses in accordance with all guidelines. It wouldn't have been normal or required procedure to individually test a delivery for pyrite or other bad stuff (paraphrasing the judgement but you get the gist).

Now its 'only' the high court - someone could appeal, appeal again, chase it all the way to the supreme court. But if HB don't have the money in the bond anyway (which is likely going by my earlier post) then its a pointless endeavour where if you lose you lose and if you win you still lose.

ArmaniJeanss

thebman wrote: »

yeah but if it is two houses per estate then they are also estates with no issues whatsoever.

It is a matter of how many houses it can cover. It probably can't cover them all (as in can't).

The building advisor at the last meeting I went to go gave some startling figures - he thinks that the 20,000 figure mentioned earlier may be a huge underestimation and that 5 times this figure may be closer.

He was basing this on just how many builders used the guilty quarry, how many estates in which there'd been a problem (he'd come across it from Louth to Laois to Carlow and all points in between). Additionally its the nature of pyrite that the problem may not manifest itself for 20 years - someone reading this may be sitting there thankful thats it one problem they are glad they dodged in the house they bought in 2005, but its ready to pounce some day.

The sheer difficulty in doing even a test for pyrite (circa €2K per house) means that we are still at the guesswork stage.

thebman

Don't think the problem will be evaluated properly though, they will wait for it to show itself and that act in each case as at least then they payments will be spread out over those years.

At least that is what I think they will do. An invisible problem isn't a problem especially if politics are involved.