Builders better but…

By - , Build 136

Builders need to work harder if they want to keep new house owners happy and the all important referral to new clients rolling in.

Figure 1: How the builder was chosen.

IN 2012, BRANZ ran the second New House Owners’ Satisfaction Survey. It focused on new house owners’ assessment of their builder’s performance and was collected to assist work on building industry performance measures.

The good and the bad

New house owners were first asked about their satisfaction levels and how they would rate their builder on 10 different aspects.

The highest satisfaction levels were for the:

  • overall quality of the home
  • service provided by the builder during the buying process
  • standard of finish of the new home.

The aspects that scored lowest were:

  • satisfaction with the service by the builder after owners have moved in
  • the fixing of defects after first occupancy.

Questions also covered input into the design of the house, how the builder was chosen, features important in choosing a builder, disputes over final costs, type of contract and how the builder could improve the build process.

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Lots of positive findings

Every aspect improved from the previous survey except the ‘overall quality of your home’, which was down slightly.

The vast majority of new house owners would recommend their builder.

Where house owners were positive about communication and project management, the average satisfaction and rating scores were very high.

It was important for new house owners to see the quality of the builder’s work before choosing a builder or to know the builder had a good reputation through a recommendation from a friend or family (see Figure 1).

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Some builders did poorly

Some 12.4% of respondents were critical of their builder, and 12.1% had a dispute with their builder over final costs.

Although the call-back rate was down by 4.4% from the last quarter, it is still high at 67.9% of respondents.

A number of builders also had poor communication with the new house owner, leading to much lower average satisfaction and rating scores.

Similarly, some builders did not project manage the build to a suitable standard for the house owner.

Figure 1: How the builder was chosen.

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Lessons to improve your business

The value of good communication and project management should not be underestimated. Poor communication and project management led to significantly worse average scores for the builder.

A significant proportion of new house owners speak critically about their builder. This should be of real concern to the builders involved as recommendations are such an important source of new work.

Work still needs to be done on reducing the number of call-backs. These largely involve work done by subcontractors, indicating a lack of quality control by the builder, which ultimately reflects badly on them.

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For more

For more See BRANZ SR287 New House Owners’ Satisfaction Survey 2012 at the BRANZ shop, www.branz.co.nz.

Download the PDF

More articles about these topics

Articles are correct at the time of publication but may have since become outdated.

Figure 1: How the builder was chosen.

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