CRITICAL – Get a Code of Compliance Certificate. I had a phone call the other day from the daughter of a couple we built a house for back in 2003. The daughter’s father had passed away a few years ago and her mother now wanted to sell the family home as it was just too big for her to manage. The daughter said that they had a buyer for house but as a condition of the sale they had to supply a Code of Compliance Certificate (CCC). As the Auckland construction law specialist Geoff Hardy of law firm Madison Hardy explains, “The CCC concept was introduced under the 1991 Building Act, but it never fulfilled its promise, largely because there was no particular incentive for building owners to obtain the CCC, and no effective penalty if they didn’t. That tended to defeat the purpose of having CCCs in the first place, so in the 2004 Building Act the Government tightened up the rules.” “Now, building owners must apply for a CCC as soon as the project is complete. If they don’t apply within two years of receiving the building consent, the Council must do something about it. However the new rules don’t apply to building projects where the consent was issued before 31 March 2005 (which is when the 2004 Building Act came into force).” To cut a long story short, it is the owner’s responsibility to apply for the CCC and although we supplied them all the information they required for the application (albeit back in 2003) they did not do it. Now the sale hinges on a mad scramble to organise this information and to apply to the council for a CCC. The daughter said that the council experiences this a lot so I asked the daughter this question (which I think is reasonable but it was not appreciated), “When the house was first listed on the market did the real estate agent ask if a CCC had been issued”. No the agent did not ask this. As mentioned, it’s the owner’s responsibility to apply for the CCC and the builder has nothing to do with it so long as they have provided all of the documentation to the home owner in order for them to make the application. If you have any questions or comments please ask them using the Enquiry section of the website or phone on 06-370-2058. Oh just one last thing, you have our permission to forward this or anything else by Moss Brothers on or share it with others that you think could benefit from this advice. Note: The quotations above in relation to the Building Act were sourced from an article written by Geoff Hardy of Madison Hardy – commercial and business law specialists based in Auckland. The article was originally published on their website at madisonhardy.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Jul 2014 04:38:11 +0000
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