The Power of Home Building Contract Reviews for Homeowners

Protect your interests with a home building contract review

When it comes to home-building projects, it’s vital you protect your interests with a comprehensive contract review. At Aitchison Reid, we help you avoid the pitfalls and unnecessary expenses that come with this kind of project – reviewing your contract to make sure it’s a true reflection of your needs.

Whether your matter requires an HIA building contract review, QBCC building contract review or a Master Builders building contract review, our Aitchison Reid suite of home building contract reviews and assessments provides homeowners contract review products that are both affordable and vital to helping you protect your home.

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We developed our home building contract reviews and assessments as a consequence of helping so many homeowners and home investors with their building disputes.  

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All too often the warning signs were apparent at the pre-contract stage and we want to help homeowners and home investors like you avoid the pitfalls and the expense of home building disputes and the resulting stressful impacts on your well-being.

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Do industry association building contracts protect my interests?

Simply put “no”, industry association building contracts do not protect your interests. HIA home building contracts and Master Builders’ home building contracts do not protect your interests as a homeowner or home investor. They are one-sided documents that are drafted by the industry associations to protect the interests of their builder members. That’s why we recommend amendments to the standard terms of HIA home building contracts and Master Builders' home building contracts so that the contracts become even-sided; please note this feature is included in our Written Advice and Premium Review products.

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Why do we review a home building contract's specifications?

Specifications, like your plans, are building contract documents.  Over the years we have noticed that builders tend to use specifications and other builder-supplied documents as a place to discreetly place their special conditions, exclusions and variable amounts instead of in the main body of the home building contract document. As a result we consider the review of your specifications is a vital part of your home building contract review; please note this feature is included in our Premium Review product.

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*Conditions for Our Home Building Contract Review Products

1. All scheduled phone call times are based on us being provided with all of your documents and payment of the fixed fee. Please note that once payments from your credit card provider are paid to us it will be paid into our solicitor's trust account until the work is carried out and invoiced. The amount that we receive from the credit card provider will be less than the amount paid above, and therefore your trust account receipt will be for the lesser amount. The transaction fees are set by our payment processor, Stripe, listed on their fees page here. As at 24 October 2019 at 9:30am AEST, Stripe's fees for domestic (Australian) cards are 1.75% plus 30 cents per transaction.

2. Our fixed fees are based on you being a resident owner. If you are not a resident owner, commercial construction law applies to your build, in particular the Building Industry Fairness (Security of Payment) Act 2017 (BIF Act), which affects most invoices sent in the construction industry.  If you are not a residential owner all services, apart from the Risk Triage, will incur an $869 additional fee to include additional advice and an information sheet on how the BIF Act will affect you.

3. These legal products do not include technical advice on the plans, specifications or the build-ability of the residence. We can refer you to a professional building expert for such advice.

4. The above prices are subject to the terms of our costs agreement and disclosure notice.

5. Before work will be carried out for your matter, we must receive payment of the fixed fees amount. 

6. The above fixed fees are based on your contract being a standard form contract from the Master Builders’ Association, the Housing Industry Association or the Queensland Building and Construction Commission.

7. In engaging our services you agree to our terms and conditions set out in our costs agreement and disclosure notice and set out in the booking and payment section.  We will email you a copy of the terms and conditions for your records.

8. Our Risk Triage and Conversation With a Lawyer products require your agreement that the phone calls are recorded. If you don't want call with us recorded, we can't supply the product to you.

9. These conditions (1 to 8) were last updated on 24 October 2019 at 10.57am AEST.

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