Property ownership comes with responsibility.

 

Today I am penning my one hundred and ninety ninth Weekly Email, so I feel I have earned the right to have a bit of a rant!

 

Over the last 33 years I have had the privilege of building homes for hundreds of fantastic clients. Overall, they are intelligent, well educated, worldly and successful people. But I could count the number of clients that have properly maintained their houses on two hands.

 

I just don’t get this.

 

If you own a car, you wouldn’t dream of ignoring its annual maintenance service. Most people go to their doctor and dentist each year for their annual check-up. Yet so many smart people are happy to do next to no maintenance on their most valuable asset which is the centre of their family life.

 

Is this a lack of information or education?

Is this a head in the sand mentality?

Is this ignorance and or arrogance?

Are people just too busy to make it happen?

Is it all of the above?

 

The modern architect designed houses that DDB builds are complex structures, built from dozens of different materials and they contain hundreds of mechanical devices and moving parts. Most parts of a building require regular systemised maintenance, especially if they involve moving parts or are exposed to mother nature.

 

I have dozens of stories about poor building maintenance causing significant damage and pain for the owners. Below is one of the more memorable one’s.

 

Several years ago, I received phone call from a lovely client in South Yarra on Christmas Day. She was hysterical because her special day had been ruined when a heavy rainstorm that morning had resulted in water flooding in through the roof directly above her dining table all set for Christmas lunch. That afternoon I inspected her 3-year-old flat roof and found the main box gutter filled with leaves (enough to fill three large garbage bins) and the opening to the main down pipe was completely blocked with a football. With proper maintenance of the flat roof this devastating leak would never have happened.

 

“If at first you don’t succeed, try doing it the way your builder told you in the first place.” Unknown

 

It would take me another 6 or 8 Weekly Emails to properly outline all the correct maintenance items and procedures that should be systematically carried out on a contemporary residential property. That would bore everyone silly (maybe that’s the problem – maintenance is dead boring!).

 

My family is very privileged to have a great beach house that we built 18 years ago. I’m proud to say that it’s as good, if not better, than the year it was built. I have a philosophy that each time I visit the beach house I leave it better than how I found it – every single visit… This might involve fixing something that needs fixing or planting a new tree or cleaning all the gutters. For me it’s become a compulsion to do something – anything to help the property be maintained in the best condition possible. It’s become an important part of my role in the family, and it gives me an enormous sense of pride and security.

 

As a builder I try to instil this philosophy into each client, but it’s often a hard sell that falls on deaf ears. At the handover of a new house or renovation we educate the client about the maintenance requirements of the property and give them a full maintenance schedule including recommended intervals and contractor details for each maintenance item. The rest is up to the owner to make it happen.

 

“A building that is well maintained but poorly designed will often out perform a well-designed building that is poorly maintained.” Unknown smart architect.

 

What tipped the scales for me to write this email is the maintenance journey Maryanne my wife has been on for the last year. 18 months ago, we purchase and moved into a 10-year-old apartment (one of only 5 apartments in the building and the one we purchased was in as-new-condition). A few months after we moved in, we started to notice some problems with the overall building and reached out to the other owners and the body corporate manager to find out about the routine maintenance. We were flabbergasted to find out that other than the lift and fire service, no other maintenance had been done on the building for 10 years and that seemed perfectly okay to the four other owners.

 

After 12 months of dogged tenacity Maryanne has managed to get all of the building maintenance up to scratch for very little out of pocket expense and it’s as if nothing has ever happened from the four other owner. This has left us both dumbfounded and just a bit miffed!

 

Some people are doers and others are just not.

 

Thanks for reading my rant.

See you next week for a special Christmas Edition (my 200^th Weekly Email).

David