Thursday 27 November 2014

"I've been wondering why it's taking twice as long to build a house now than it used to”

Why do we take these things for granted? 

Why have New Zealanders taken it lying down?

John is 78 years old. He spent most of his working life in the construction industry. He tells me there are still far too many elderly people [in Christchurch] who have not had their damaged houses fixed.
   This is a bloke who can look at how a house is being built and provide a real, educated assessment of the situation.
    "I've been wondering why it's taking twice as long to build a house now than it used to. We used to price a three-bedroom house on a timeframe of 400 to 600 hours. In those days everything was made on the job. We dug out the foundations with shovels, mixed the concrete on site, nailed up the frames and pitched the roof."
    "Now everything comes ready-made. All they do is set up the ready-made frames and fix the ready-made trusses. Everything is prefabricated. Yet despite this, it's taking six months or more to build a house. It is also often taking over 18 months to get to the building consent stage."

More of John’s story here.

More stories about why things take so long here.

6 comments:

Frank Black said...

I've just bought a 40 year old house and I can tell you the reason - the build quality is shit. Nothing lines up and nothing is straight. There's zero insulation and the water pressure is abysmal.
I guess quality wasn't that important back then.

Anonymous said...

Don't worry Black Francis, you can get plenty of that same quality house built today for four times the price.

paul scott said...

A lot now is being talked about the incompetence of home building here in New Zealand.
You need at least $NZ2500 a meter for good building, and then also you need a whip, and you will have to stand over the builder , and say no, that is not good enough .
You can have my home at half the price. I live in the TC3 zone where the land has dropped .
My friends said sell on your advantage of a double section [ 850 meters] and get out .
Well just one tiny moron problem, the Christchurch City Council. Rather than allow me to build a simple wooden home on a rubber foundation; these people want a hundred thousand dollars for Council and other fees to examine where the rocks are under the surface, and make people feel safe. Like they did with leaky buildings.yes.
Well Hugh Pavletich has bashed his head against this ignorance for decades. I hope Christchurch City Council will evaporate , begone, extinguished :
Crap builders and tradesmen from overseas, crap homes, idiot Council, compromised Government;
hopeless dead end rough streets to nowhere.

Angry Tory said...

Why do houses take twice as long to build? Because they are twice as big.

http://www.qv.co.nz/n/news-details/phoenix-78?blogId=62

narcocapitalist said...

Where has pc gone ?

Peter Cresswell said...

PC's been busy trying to make building houses quicker and easier. Which is time-consuming and difficult.