Gday

I hope that I have put this in the right forum.

I bought one of those 'house and land' packages with Devine out in one of the new estates in Melbourne's south east. Being young and able (finally) to afford my own place I liked the idea of living in a nice new place out in the country. So I was well pleased that Leigh Matthews, the guy that delivered Collingwood's 14th premiership, endorsed Devine. I knew nothing about building companies and had no other way of knowing which was good and which was bad.

That was one and a half years ago. The house has been built, the finance went through ok and six months ago I moved into my piece of suburban heaven. Everything was grand

Recently though I have noticed that the house is a little quirky. It does things that you would expect a 60 year old house to do, not a 6 month old house. There are internal doors that do not close properly because the bottom of the door is grinding against the door frame. There are cracks and things appearing here and there. There was a leaky pipe underneath the kitchen sink and it was making the carpet behind the kitchen damp. When I went down on it to fix it up I found the contruction of the kitchen bench, sink and storage spaces was of pretty poor quality .. it was ok when you open the cupboard doors, but once you remove the drain pipe and the shelves, there are holes here and there, screws haven't been put in properly, and the thing looks like it's been put together by ten year olds.

There was also a water tank in the back that I paid five grand extra for, they placed it on a mound of sand and thanks to erosion and a wet winter within a month it was leaning dangerously towards my neighbours fence.

That's got me worried now. There are other places that I can't look into, like inside my walls for example. How can I be sure the electrical work has been done properly?

So I have come here in the hope that some professionals who know of Devine and their trickery can point me in the right direction. I'd like to get the house fixed up well, the way I figure it in ten years or so it will make my place more valuable than the houses down the road which have been built by the same company but which (hopefully) haven't had their problems attended to, because they are occupied by renters.

Will chasing Devine be worth the trouble or are they skilled at avoiding responsibility? I do not have wads of cash to throw at lawyers.

Damn you Leigh Matthews.


Read the full thread at RenovateForum.com...