Defect Liability Period and Home Owner’s rights

The period of time from the date you receive delivery of Vacant Possession is known as Defect Liability Period during which the developer is responsible to fix any defects. Under Housing Developer’s Act (HAD), Defect Liability Period only covers residential properties and development.

You must conduct a thorough inspection to your property upon getting the keys and get the developer to fix them up accordingly. Normally developers respond to it quickly through their Customer Service Department or Property Maintenance Team depending on the severity of the defects. It is advisable for the owner not to carry out any renovations to the property until all patent defects are rectified.

What to inspect and How to inspect? You may seek for professional service of vacant possession inspectors or defects assessment inspectors to assist you in identifying patent defects in your unit through a reasonable inspections. Then after you may use their assessment report to submit the defects form to the developer.

The developer will have 30 days from the date you submit the defects form to rectify the defects. If your developer is unresponsive, you may appoint your own contractor to repair the defects and the cost can be recovered from the developer’s lawyer. However this process requires a further 30 days written notice to be sent to the developer with the cost of repair. If the developer still refuses to carry out the repairs after the 30 days’ notice period or refuses to reimburse the repair cost, owners may submit their claims of RM 50,000.00 maximum to the Housing tribunal and action will be taken against the developer.

In most of the cases, the owners are forced to accept the repair works done even though it is not to the expectation of the owner. Usually owners accept the handing over after repair works in order to speed up their renovation works and move in to the property which is not a good practise technically. It is likely for the same defects to reoccur after the DLP period and create major defects if it is not handled correctly from the beginning.

Owner has the rights to understand on how and why the defect has occurred and request the developer to carry out procedures to diagnose the cause of defects. The developer is obliged to submit the remediation method to the owner at request and obtain their consent to carry out the proposed remediation. Owner may seek for professional’s advice to confirm the reliability of the proposed method of rectification. It is compulsory for developer to provide proof of rectifications such as photographs and reports to the owner if it is requested for verification.

Do not rush for renovations by compromising remediation procedures. Even though Defect Liability Period is a lengthy process, right approach would provide a permanent solution to your defects.

Right remediation procedure is essential to preserve the value of properties.