Towering inferno owners to pay for refit

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Via AFR:

Many owners of the 1000 NSW buildings identified with possible non-compliant cladding won’t be able to claim against their developer or builder because the two-year window to make such claims will have passed, a property lawyer says.

A change in law two years ago cut the window to make such claims from seven years, in part to reduce the risks for the statutory warranty insurance the state government underwrote.

This meant owners of buildings built under a contract agreed after 1 February, 2012 – which includes many built in the current housing boom – would not be able to claw back the costs of rectifying any non-compliant cladding. This is the view of David Bannerman, the principal of North Sydney-based Bannermans Lawyers.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.