Didn't you do a PDI? Were any of these defects noted during the PDI? If not, you still have a chance to report them after 1 year of occupancy. I had a few minor issues (Tile cracked, some cracking on walls, cabinet finish issue) that were fixed with my 1st year Tarion warranty here at Luna. Read through Tarion to see what is covered and what is not, and make a list so you can submit when the time comes. Concord-Adex went above and beyond, offering to fix any cracks on walls within the first year, something that is not covered by Tarion. See if your builder is offering anything like that.
Yes, we did a PDI. But our rep who walked us through basically said "oh we'll fix that before you move in" or "that's normal... but we'll make sure its ok" or something along those lines. In fact, we noted a number of dents in our floor. And when I went to do the follow up, they had simply filled in the holes with cheap wood filler. I refused to sign off on the wood they did and told them to fix it again. In the end, I was told "dents are no longer covered once you move in", which makes sense from angle that I could have caused some on the move in, but what about those I didn't sign off on?
Naive? Sure, you can call us that. We don't care. But how much can be reasonably be expected of first time buyers. We tried to do our best and it wasn't good enough.
We're doing what we can with Tarion and the Lifetime Development rep, but we're not holding our breath.
The builder and developer will just try to wear you down as you try to get your in-suite issues addressed. Get to know your neighbours and start to collect up similar lists of deficiencies. Never belittle a fault. A crack in a new suite is a deficiency. A year out, it is "settling," so highlight every crack right now and complain about it. A neighbour of mine logged 200 phone calls for pipe noise. The pipe was found to be defective, but he'd still have the noise if he had not called ten or fifteen times a day.
Any hidden spaces will be full of junk. You probably don't want to look inside your air ducts (or maybe you do). The spaces below kitchen cabinets are often filled with enough dust and crap to choke a vacuum cleaner. Sloppy is the norm. Reasonable is superior. Superior is virtually unheard of.
If your building is registered and you have an elected board of directors, make sure they do a thorough walk-through of every part of the building and list every deficiency they can identify - no matter how trivial. Hopefully they will hire a good engineer for the building performance audit. Given what you have shown here, my guess would be that the common elements are of similar poor quality. They will need a very thorough inspection.
That's exactly how we feel, that's why we made that blog. I am afraid to pull back and look into the dark spaces, but if that's what I need to do, then thats what I need to do. We have a child coming into this world soon and I'm going to see if I can't clean up before the little one starts crawling around on the floor.
I'm trying to get other M5V'ers to share their experiences too, but I'm not so sure they will be so forthcoming. Heck, they might even hate me for exposing our shame.
Thanks again for the kind and thoughtful replies
