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angie68  06:43:45 Sun Aug 10 2003 Unavailable 6433 posts Administrator   Reply |
Buyers beware of The Block
By MATTHEW HORAN 10aug03 THE four apartments in Channel Nine's The Block breach building standards, and three will need substantial repairs, a building inspection has revealed. The investigation has found at least 13 contraventions of the Building Code of Australia in renovations carried out on the Bondi apartment block for the hit reality TV show. Channel Nine yesterday threatened to take legal action to suppress the report by leading building inspector Paul Ratcliff, who was contracted to conduct a standard pre-purchase inspection of all four apartments. Mr Ratcliff, who owns Property Services Inc, and is the secretary of the Institute of Building Consultants, conducted the first independent assessment of the four apartments. He will meet producers of The Block this morning to outline the faults he found. Another four possible breaches, all waterproofing issues, will need further investigation. Any breaches of the building code, which governs building standards, mean the units would have to be fixed before sale. The four units -- each renovated by a different couple with a $40,000 budget -- go to auction next weekend, in a televised event that is expected to attract more than two million viewers. Mr Ratcliff said three units were bad enough to need urgent work. "With Wazza and Gavin's bathroom, you'd have to go pulling up tiles to fix the drainage problems," he said. "It breaches the building code by not having mechanical ventilation, and the shower doesn't have the right fall for drainage, so it floods the floor, which breaches Australian standard AS3740." Only the upstairs apartment, renovated by Paul and Kylie, passed most of the tests, failing only by not having a floor waste drain in the laundry. "It looks like most of the couples have gone for the look of the apartment, rather than actually making sure all of the work is done properly," he said. "Paul and Kylie's is the only one I'd feel comfortable about telling a close friend to buy. "You do get this a lot with owner-renovations; there's not been much attention to detail. "In Gavin and Wazza's apartment, the toilet seat doesn't even stay up. "Their floor is the worst in the block; there are fibres stuck to the polish and you can see the overlap of the floor polish." Fiona and Adam's apartment had localised rising damp, improper mechanical ventilation in the bathroom, as well as an oven that was not screwed in, and gaps between skirting boards and floors. In Phil and Amity's upstairs apartment, the hot water heater's waste pipe was directly connected to a hole in the sewage pipe, which could contaminate the hot water. Mr Ratcliff said the common stairway to the upstairs apartments also breached the building code by having stairs of unequal height. He said, in terms of construction, Paul and Kylie had the best unit, followed by a tie between Fiona and Adam and Gavin and Warren with Phil and Amity's the worst. | ||||
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testosteronegirl 10:23:25 Sun Aug 10 2003 Offline posts Reply |
As much as I would love to live in Bondi, someones going to pay way too much for these units.
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MelissaA  00:33:18 Mon Aug 11 2003 Unavailable 4398 posts Goddess Bee  I Promise I'll Be Offline Soon...???  Reply |
And I thought they were bad enough to start with!
There was also a mention somewhere of this being a good tactic by some media services to gain extra profit by doing things like this that will hike up not only the general price of the building, but the surrounding areas - so if say somebody from the network lives in the next street and these hit a record price, then the prices all go up as do the network executive's place.....etc..etc...etc.... I wouldn't buy any of those places even if I had the money though - especially after that report! 
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MelissaA 01:18:18 Mon Aug 11 2003 Unavailable 4398 posts Goddess Bee I Promise I'll Be Offline Soon...??? Reply |
All I'm going to say about this one is that if the faults were so minor, then why did channel 9 spend so much time, money and effort in trying to suppress the report???
 Nice try Channel 9 - not!~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stumbling Block for Channel 9 August 11, 2003 A REPORT about shoddy renovations on Channel Nine's top-rating series The Block might scare away a few potential buyers, the units' sales agent admitted yesterday. But John McGrath was defiant and said serious investors would not let defects, such as a broken toilet seat, deter them from securing a stake in Sydney's white-hot property market. "This is the real world and this is what buyers have to deal with," Mr McGrath said yesterday. Wise investors would factor costs of repairs into their bids, he added. "A buyer might say 'I was going to pay $650,000, but I've seen the report and now maybe my top bid will be $645,000'," Mr McGrath said. NSW Real Estate Institute head Chris Fitzpatrick said the complaints were typical of faults in old buildings. Yesterday Nine's deputy chief executive David Gyngell said: "These are the realities of buying property. "If you are not going to buy a property because the toilet seat won't stay up, you're not serious about getting into the Sydney property market." Nine yesterday appeared to have gagged a building inspector who reported at least 13 breaches of the Australian building code. After his report for The Sunday Telegraph, building inspector Paul Ratcliff yesterday would not comment. Four couples compete to renovate on a $40,000 budget. Whoever gets the best price when the Roscoe St, Bondi, units are auctioned next weekend, wins. Faults range from paintwork to plumbing, some costing tens of thousands of dollars to fix, his report said. Nine spokeswoman Wendy Squires, who had threatened to try to suppress the story, yesterday dismissed the complaints as "minor". Last month Nine won an injunction against Channel 7 after it filmed renovations with a hidden camera. Yesterday Ms Squires said she backed out of earlier threats to get an injunction against The Sunday Telegraph when she learned its inspection had been above-board. Ms Squires declined Daily Telegraph requests to speak to contestants. Warren, whose bathroom reportedly had no ventilation, said: "We're not allowed." The Daily Telegraph
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