In article ,
Andrew McKay writes:
On 6 Aug 2003 08:53:13 GMT, (Andrew
Gabriel) wrote:

My house was done that way rather than by having an NHBC guarantee.
It is backed up the surveyors insurance. My solicitor said it was
generally regarded as much better than the NHBC guarantee because
the time limit is much longer, and because any solicitor who's had
any dealings with an NHBC guarantee will tell you just how worthless
that is.

I wasn't aware that you could opt-out of the NHBC guarantee. How does
that work then?

Builder wasn't a member of NHBC, and so had no choice.
It was a small local company. They have to employ a surveyor to
come and inspect the build at various stages. At the end, the
surveyor signs a certificate saying he checked the house was built
properly. If he turns out to be wrong, you claim off his insurance.
I don't have the details as they're lodged with the deeds or the
local council (can't remember which). My recollection is that there
is an initial 10 year period, but unlike the NHBC guarantee, you
can still claim for problems which come to light after the 10 year
period and were not obvious beforehand. I think you have to claim
within 3 years of a problem becoming aparent though. There is no
upper time limit, but the amount awarded in a claim after the first
ten years would be reduced to reflect the length of satisfactory
time/usage of the building before it showed up, and I think she
said in practice a claim after 20 years was unlikely to award
anything. I don't know how general these limits might be for such
schemes, or how specific this is to my particular guarantee.

I suppose if you are buying a house before it is built, you might
be able to specify this mechanism to be used instead of an NHBC
guarantee, but I don't know if that would be possible.

--
Andrew Gabriel