Thursday, March 1, 2012

new laws against cowboy builders come into effect today

As mentioned in a earlier post, Canadian building guru Mike Holmes considers that only 20% of builders in that country are good, while 70% are bad - the ones who don't know or care enough - and 10% are ugly - the ones who are deliberately out to rip you off.

It has always surprised us that a lot of people who employ building contractors don't do the obvious thing and check them out first, most importantly by looking at examples of their previous work. Legitimate professional people are happy to be checked out, it's the shysters who are not.

The other red flag is when people expect you to pay a high proportion of the money up front - don't pay it.  It's reasonable to pay a deposit (and you need to look at that from their point of view), but it shouldn't be more than a small percentage.  When the materials arrive, then of course pay some more.

The details of the new NZ licensing requirements are on this website

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