No Rainwater Tank Before Handover, Vendor Offered 2.5k Discount
Hello, long time lurker here. As a first time new home buyer, I currently have a situation that’s so bizarre so I thought I’d share it here.
Background: New build in a suburb of Adelaide. Vendor is the builder. The house had been on market for three weeks when we decided to put in an offer.
During inspection, we noticed the rainwater tank wasn’t there, although the concrete pad was already done. REA mentioned something like the vendor already ordered it and it’s on the way. We didn’t think too much of it.
Haggling happened (we upped our offer by 58k) and B&P went fine. The contract was signed quickly on the day of offer being accepted.
Fast forward to this week. Still no sight of the tank, the agent is starting to ghost on us after giving us vogue answers like there is a national rainwater tank shortage and maybe 4 more weeks balabala. Our conveyancer started to take a major role on communications.
This is when we found out from their conveyancer: the tank was never ordered. We will wait 6+ weeks and we need to liaise with the installer if we want vendor to order it. However, they are willing to offer us 2 grand discount if we decide to take on the task ourselves.
Obviously we didn’t agree right away and wanted to know better before making a decision. We then realized we need stamped site drainage plan with tank size to get an accurate quote, which the vendor was unwilling to release until settlement (even they knew we need one to get the quote). The only plans they gave us so far are working drawings. The rough quote we got was about $3500 for supply and install a 1000L tank and pump. So we gave the vendor a ballpark price of $5000 as we don’t even know what size of tank we are gonna get, but we did put 1000L tank in our rough quote write up.
Their conveyancer got back to us and basically said “it’s easy to just get a 1000L tank from Bunnings for $400-500”. They didn’t understand why we were being so picky about the tank. They disagreed with $5000, however, they were willing to offer $2,500 as a “gesture of goodwill”.
They gave us deadline to response by a certain time on Friday so they can have an early settlement next week. Said rainwater tank is not a legal reason to delay the settlement. (Note: We have plenty of time left for settlement period. Our conveyancer hasn’t finished all the paperwork at this point. There is no way the settlement can happen next week).
The call was so bizarre that even our conveyancer was shocked. We decided to consult council on this matter. The council people were extremely helpful and gave us the plans.
Turns out that we actually need a 3000L rainwater tank. So we happily supplied our actual quote of $4000, tank made locally, lead time is 4 weeks. We are still asking for $5,000 for all the trouble.
And the builder’s artificial turf is not compliant. The plan clearly shows Lawn and the council says the builder should redo it for us.
We called the agent again and he had no clue, said “council shouldn’t bother with what’s inside of the house”, “it’s a legal issue now, I suggest you to talk to your conveyancer”.
So our conveyancer sent out our response to them, and asked them about the artificial turf.
It’s now Friday night, we haven’t heard a peep from the vendor 😂.
The thing is, we still love the house, but the dealing experience with the agent and vendor is beyond frustrating. And just like the old Reddit saying: It’s never about the rain water tank.