https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/124279195/its-al
l-fake-chinese-migrant-builders-sold-a-dream-left-exploited-
and-hungry.

and
"The New Zealand Chinese Building Industry Association estimates 50 per cent of all residential construction work in Auckland is being undertaken by Chinese firms".

mkr_ahearn - 2021-02-21 09:43:00

One again it's the Chinese exploiting the Chinese just as the Indians are exploiting the Indians and that's apart from being lousy landlords as well.

wasgonna - 2021-02-21 09:54:00

wasgonna wrote:

One again it's the Chinese exploiting the Chinese just as the Indians are exploiting the Indians and that's apart from being lousy landlords as well.

this is true, and if you have bought a new property built in the last 10 years you know just how true. So many shortcuts, so much hidden, so much missing, doubt very much the skilled bit either.

gabbysnana - 2021-02-21 10:05:00

Multiple houses being built by the same firms, that material is removed from one construction (after inspections) and taken to the next job.
But saying that, a local firm did something along the same lines here and now the apartment owners are facing $400k rebuild bills.

smallwoods - 2021-02-21 11:38:00

smallwoods wrote:

Multiple houses being built by the same firms, that material is removed from one construction (after inspections) and taken to the next job.
But saying that, a local firm did something along the same lines here and now the apartment owners are facing $400k rebuild bills.

Is this happening in New Zealand ?
I have heard first hand experience of it happening 10 years ago in Melbourne but that's Ausies for you.
Never heard of it happening here but nothing surprises me anymore.

blogzy - 2021-02-21 15:57:00

blogzy wrote:

Is this happening in New Zealand ?
I have heard first hand experience of it happening 10 years ago in Melbourne but that's Ausies for you.
Never heard of it happening here but nothing surprises me anymore.

there has been reports of that sort of thing for many many years now.

i would guess more than likely its on fixed price jobs where costs have gone up so they do anything they can to cut costs.
we have a building boom yet many building companies have gone bust.

tweake - 2021-02-21 16:04:00

tweake wrote:

there has been reports of that sort of thing for many many years now.

i would guess more than likely its on fixed price jobs where costs have gone up so they do anything they can to cut costs.
we have a building boom yet many building companies have gone bust.

One firm was removing studs etc from the walls after inspection, before lining.
Another lifted the mesh from the driveway and took it to another job.

smallwoods - 2021-02-21 16:57:00

Friend back in the UK was building a new level on a the top of his house in Fulham - a new kitchen and living area and roof garden. Because it was a kitchen they needed to put in some really expensive fireproofing in the floor.

It got inspected then the council lost the paperwork. Snap reinspection and when they pulled up the floor boards the insulation had all been taken out by the fire specialist.

sparkychap - 2021-02-21 18:14:00

There were groups of townhouses being built by Chinese developers that were so bad that the building inspectors demanded that some units had to be bowled and started again.

apollo11 - 2021-02-21 18:16:00

smallwoods wrote:

One firm was removing studs etc from the walls after inspection, before lining.
Another lifted the mesh from the driveway and took it to another job.

I would hope a builder in NZ would get his licence revoked for that.
Houses in the west side of Melbourne were breaking their foundations due to this practice.Steel reinforcing being moved to the next house in the development after the inspector had been. .

Edited by blogzy at 6:23 pm, Sun 21 Feb

blogzy - 2021-02-21 18:22:00

A group of residents in our area are trying to stop a redevelopment of the local dairy. What the chinese owners propose is a 3 storey, 10 apartment block on a section which is perhaps 800 big. Apart from trying to stop this actual build, the whole area has covenants on each residential property, including the shop. The Council has approved the plaans after consent, but there is now to be a court case to endeavour to remove the covenant.

If this is successful it could open the floodgates for the whole area. I am told that there are 3 properties in the road the school is in (a very narrow one which is full of cars at school time), waiting to see if these dairy owners are successful. These properties are being rented out ready to apply for removal of covenant and be bowled to build townhouses like showboxes.
These developments are not at all in keeping with the whole neghbourhood which was developed in the 60's with small green areas throughout. It was originally part of Fishers farm owned by the Fisher family of Fisher window and Fisher & Paykel, and the covenants were applied to each title to keep it family and community friendly.

I suspect several of the blocks being constructed in nearby areas to this are owned by chinese as there is no concept of design and communal space is non-existent. How they got consent to buid these eyesores is beyond me. People I feel sorry for are their neighbours, losing sunlight and privacy. Capricorngirl

mlarkin - 2021-02-22 09:16:00

mlarkin wrote:

These developments are not at all in keeping with the whole neghbourhood which was developed in the 60's with small green areas throughout. It was originally part of Fishers farm owned by the Fisher family of Fisher window and Fisher & Paykel, and the covenants were applied to each title to keep it family and community friendly.

Capricorngirl

Ancient history and completely irrelevant in the 21st century. You did everything to get sky high housing costs, so now you can lump it with the renting proles.

Edited by kestrel43 at 10:34 am, Mon 22 Feb

kestrel43 - 2021-02-22 10:32:00

kestrel43 wrote:

Ancient history and completely irrelevant in the 21st century. You did everything to get sky high housing costs, so now you can lump it with the renting proles.

Interesting. How did mlarkin do 'everything' to get sky high housing costs?

apollo11 - 2021-02-22 10:40:00

FYI we have lived in this community for 48 years, firstly in a modest 60's 2 storey Lockwood house bringing up 4 children and now in a one storey one which we moved to 11 years ago after I broke my hip. The original subdivision is full of typical 60's houses on sections of roughly 800. We moved two streets into a newer area built late 70's where yes the houses are larger and in some cases fancier. However, even these houses are now 50 years old roughly. There are units or townhouses in this area, but they are not crammed onto small sites and therefore do not detract from the overall ambience. The river towpath put in by Rotary is fully enjoyed by all ages both walkers, and cyclists and people walking their dogs.

We realise that we are lucky to live here, However it is not serviced by public transport at all and never will be as the streets are not wide enough.
"Goofy's" unitary plan to get Aucklanders on pblich transport and cram people into the city is ctually ruining the whole city. Capricorngirl

mlarkin - 2021-02-22 11:05:00

Incidentally Kestrel I am originally from Wellington and well remember the huge state housing being built in the Hutt Valley and Titahi Bay/Porirua. At the time rental accommodation in Wellingtoon particularly was disgusting. My cousin's family with two childrden were living in two rooms in Miramar. They luckily secured a house in Titahi Bay and brought up a family of 6.

We visited several friends in the new state housing in Hutt. I have often wondered lately why the current Government don'tt read their history books to find out how these estates werre created so quickly. I am sure there are lessons to be learned from this teamwork approach. The chaos in areas of social housing redevelopment in Auckland are incredible It defies logic how they are going about it and so slowly. Capricorngirl

mlarkin - 2021-02-22 12:54:00

They didn't have to fill in all the paper work, wait for council inspections and pay all the taxes/fees.
Not that difficult to see what affect the Government and Council bureaucracy has.

pcle - 2021-02-22 14:53:00

gabbysnana wrote:

this is true, and if you have bought a new property built in the last 10 years you know just how true. So many shortcuts, so much hidden, so much missing, doubt very much the skilled bit either.

workmanship is crap.believe me i have hung some feature walls for them.How in hell they get away with it god only knows.

payntr - 2021-02-22 18:51:00

payntr wrote:

workmanship is crap.believe me i have hung some feature walls for them.How in hell they get away with it god only knows.

sounds like things havn't changed much since the 90's.

tweake - 2021-02-22 19:00:00

I was paperhanging a wall in a new build when a builder came across and asked me if i would like to paint and decorate a couple of units for him,Isaid what are you paying per sq metre for 3 coats,nah he said you only have to do 2coats ,spray first coat then roll 2nd coat to finish ,What ,i said is this what your painters do?he said yep just get them done as quick as you can.I said stuff that dont want my name on them,

payntr - 2021-02-22 19:13:00

i remember a fairly decent house i was working on and it had all these red stickers everywhere. i asked the guys what they where,...."thats all the defects they have to fix".

tweake - 2021-02-22 19:26:00

tweake wrote:

i remember a fairly decent house i was working on and it had all these red stickers everywhere. i asked the guys what they where,...."thats all the defects they have to fix".

lol what a joke and the call themselves painters,more like walking colour charts.some of them have more paint on themselves than on the walls.

Edited by payntr at 7:38 pm, Mon 22 Feb

payntr - 2021-02-22 19:37:00

payntr wrote:

lol what a joke and the call themselves painters,more like walking colour charts.some of them have more paint on themselves than on the walls.

it wasn't just paint, it was everything. if i remember right the carpet was going to get ripped out and replaced.
can't recall if it was that place, but one place had walls that where not straight.
quite a few houses had holes in the roofing iron.

probably the worse thing looking back on it, was that many owners didn't care. some of the places i worked on again a few years latter with new owners.

tweake - 2021-02-22 19:49:00

smallwoods wrote:

One firm was removing studs etc from the walls after inspection, before lining.
Another lifted the mesh from the driveway and took it to another job.

It doesn't help when councils send out inspectors that are still on trainer wheels.

We had a logfire installation and the inspector stood in front of the unit and asked if it was the pedestal or legged version. He then prattled on about location of smoke alarms, so I guess that was one page of the reg's he had read!

Recently my stepson had pre-lining inspection done on major renovations he undertook himself. Inspector was asking the owner/builder "Why did you do xxx that way" Answer: "Because that's what the code says".

Councils are seriously underfunded but allowing this sort of crap to go on is downright dangerous and potentially exposes future house owners to expensive remediation.

harm_less - 2021-02-23 15:28:00

tweake wrote:

it wasn't just paint, it was everything. if i remember right the carpet was going to get ripped out and replaced.
can't recall if it was that place, but one place had walls that where not straight.
quite a few houses had holes in the roofing iron.

probably the worse thing looking back on it, was that many owners didn't care. some of the places i worked on again a few years latter with new owners.

These so called houses are $600-000 and upwards,

payntr - 2021-02-23 18:07:00

payntr wrote:

These so called houses are $600-000 and upwards,

so where those, back in the 90's and early 2000's.
i'll bet a few of them are in the 2 mill range today. (assuming they didn't rot and get bulldozed).

tweake - 2021-02-23 18:41:00

harm_less wrote:

It doesn't help when councils send out inspectors that are still on trainer wheels.

We had a logfire installation and the inspector stood in front of the unit and asked if it was the pedestal or legged version. He then prattled on about location of smoke alarms, so I guess that was one page of the reg's he had read!

Recently my stepson had pre-lining inspection done on major renovations he undertook himself. Inspector was asking the owner/builder "Why did you do xxx that way" Answer: "Because that's what the code says".

Councils are seriously underfunded but allowing this sort of crap to go on is downright dangerous and potentially exposes future house owners to expensive remediation.

trouble is the inspectors are mates with the builders. so a lot of the time they don't check and just take their word for it.
a mate had that with his build. inspectors never looked at anything.
one hit the headlines a few years back as it was recently signed off by council yet it wasn't even finished.

the catch of this is that its ratepayers that pay out for all the cost of repairs etc.
builders run, council can't run so it just passes the cost on.

tweake - 2021-02-23 18:45:00

tweake wrote:

trouble is the inspectors are mates with the builders. so a lot of the time they don't check and just take their word for it.
a mate had that with his build. inspectors never looked at anything.
one hit the headlines a few years back as it was recently signed off by council yet it wasn't even finished.

the catch of this is that its ratepayers that pay out for all the cost of repairs etc.
builders run, council can't run so it just passes the cost on.

The whole building industry needs a damn good shake up.

payntr - 2021-02-23 20:19:00

kestrel43 wrote:

Ancient history and completely irrelevant in the 21st century. You did everything to get sky high housing costs, so now you can lump it with the renting proles.

No it's not "Ancient history and completely irrelevant in the 21st century." - in this case Auckland doesn't have to have apartments on every square cm of land and can continue to have single houses on small lots of land.

trogedon - 2021-02-24 20:44:00

kestrel43 wrote:

Ancient history and completely irrelevant in the 21st century. You did everything to get sky high housing costs, so now you can lump it with the renting proles.

Ha, ha. Excellent, clever and thoughtful comment.

hkjoe - 2021-02-24 20:48:00