Is it gone yet!?!?

As I said in the last post, the house was off our block one day after it was supposed to be and the block is still not clear.  What are the consequences for construction industry people not doing what they are contracted to do?

Thanks to the Queensland government there is this great website where you can look up the reputation of your licensed builder or tradesman.  The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (previously  known as the QBSA) allows you to punch a tradie... no no no... I mean punch in a tradie/builder/company name and out pops a report.  This report has their turn over, their bad deeds and their rectification record. House removal mate's record showed his turn over was small time but he'd been around for 15 years.  His bad deed record was clean.  Completely clean. The names on the truck weren't matching up with my house guy, and I realised he is not actually a house remover.  He just buys and sells removal homes, subbing out removal work to another company.

The trucks have a different name on them.

After the house was gone, I rang him up every three working days (on average) and asked "When is the rubbish going to be taken away?".  He would say in a couple of days or next week and once mentioned that it had been raining so it was taking a while.  I was getting weary of nothing happening but if I was unreasonable or too disgruntled, he might walk away. Wifey was telling me to calm down.  I was pretty busy at the time and didn't want to deal with sorting out the mess.  I'd previously studied up on this construction agreement stuff and worked out that I should allow reasonable time for rain (it had been quite rainy).

Two and half weeks like this!

Two and half weeks after the "gone by" date (reasonable enough time for rain), I consulted with a solicitor, made a call to the removal guy and spoke the phrases "reasonable time", "in breach" and "recover costs".  He seemed upset (as you would) and told me, that each time I called him, he would call his sub contractor who would then make promises to him.  The very next day (a Saturday) a machine was on site removing rubbish and digging out the old slab.  The following Monday, the machine was gone, without the job being finished.  Of course I made another call and asked politely... "It's not finished, the machine is gone, what's happening?".

Yay!  Machine on site. Nearly finished!

The answer was "The machine sunk in the wet clay... It's started raining, the ground is too wet and nothing can be done until it dries. There is no way it can be surveyed, and there is no way a soil test drill can safely enter the site."

"How long do you think it will take to dry out?"

"Weeks."

Awww... Where did the machine go?

I went and had a look at our land myself... he was right, and here we are... still not ready for our new house.

What's a house worth without land underneath it?

What's a house worth without land underneath it? Not much!

My wife and I have been buying and selling second hand goods for as long as we could read the trading post.  Furniture, cars, electronic goods, baby stuff, you name it, we've bought and sold.  Selling goods second hand can be a really random experience.  Some things go in seconds, like the deck and the fence for instance.  I thought they would sit there forever but they were sold the day after advertising them.  I literally had multiple buyers on my property trying to outbid each other over the deck.

Gumtree, the greatest Aussie invention.

Selling the house to be removed off our block took seven months.  The removal home companies make more money moving a house directly to the new owners property but only after all the approvals have been granted and bonds paid.  Straight after signing up with a removal company  there was immediate interest, then nothing for two months.   In hindsight I think we were never going to what we wanted fro the house. None of the companies said "you're dreaming" when they probably should have.

So the house was not selling, and I began scheming up ways to get money for it.  One scheme was to buy some land out in woop woop, move the house there and on sell it ASAP.   I did the sums and worked out it wasn't going to be worth it.  We may have made, 20k or we may have lost 20k and it would have taken a lot of time and effort.  Also, most regional councils require a bond if you are going move a removal home on to your block. This is to make sure it's actually going to be a real home and not just dumped there.  We gave up on the schemes and decided to try and sell again.

The house still made it to woop woop.

Gumtree had been good to us, so we advertised privately on gumtree and got a good offer from a small removal home company.  It was subject to permission for tree trimming in our street,  BUT... the council guy said no.  The house could still be removed, but the house needed to be chopped in half so the offer was halved. I got some quotes for clearing the block after the house was gone and realised that the money we would get wouldn't cover the cost for site clean up. It's pretty standard for these removal home people to buy the house for a dollar on the condition that it was gone and the site cleaned up by a certain date so we negotiated down again... to a dollar, on condition the site was cleared after the removal.  We got a contract saying so.

I had completed all the disconnections by the agreed disconnection date.  There was some trouble with the electricity and the plumber took a week longer than he promised, but they were all done on time. I called the removal guy up and asked when the house would go.  He said by the "gone by" date.  I then asked what the likelihood of it going earlier was.  He said "not likely".  The house had already been on sold and he was going to delay for as long as he could until approvals for it's new location were ready.  The "gone by" date came and I called him expecting excuses.  I was shocked and elated when I was told that it would be gone by tomorrow night and the site cleaned up by the end of the week.  Awesome!!!

The morning of the move day came and it was already on big trailers with the roof being taken off.  In the afternoon it was cut in half and the trailers were ready to go.  The next morning it was gone.  Clearing the site is another story and, as of now, still not finished.