So you have secured a residential stand? Congratulations to you for getting a legit residential stand. Last time on ZBIN when we tackled Real Estate Issues we covered ‘how to avoid losing hard earned money by buying dubious residential stands’. If you have not read the post then we urge you to go on the search button and look for this very helpful post.
Anyway the aim of this post is to help first time home builders especially in terms of what to avoid. So you have secured your stand, you have an approved house plan and you are raring to go. Below we will help you in a few critical areas. More areas will be covered in next instalments.
Searching for builders: No doubt a difficult talk and we encourage you to search widely and make sure that you have the right personnel for the job. Do not pick anyone from the street but consult friends or relatives, check adverts on newspapers. Shortlist at least 4 builders and ask them to bring details of who will be working with them (their teams). Once you have details of team composition then do a background check and ask for referrals. We urge you to get at least 4 referrals. The reason you will be doing this is because you do not want inexperienced people to be doing anything on your residential site.
Builders with many contracts: On what to avoid is a situation where the builder has too many jobs such that they subcontract the work to someone else. This is why its important to find who they will be working with. You will need to check this when doing referral work and it may be useful to always check whether they are on the site or not.
Stolen Building Materials: Perhaps your biggest risk, get this fact right-these guys will definitely steal building materials-mostly cement and bricks and it will be hard to know that you have been conned. The end result will most likely be a house that has walls that crack in the long run. So how do you reduce the risk? Its difficult to pinpoint a sure-fire way that reduces risk-sometimes you can opt to have someone who can oversee the project implementation. It can work provided there is no collusion between someone whom you have chosen and the builders. A friend of mine once assigned a relative to provide checks and balances-the relative ended up finding buyers of cement! Our recommendation on the issue is that you should be available on the ground to see certain house construction stages such as the construction of the foundation.
We will cover more Real Estate matters in the coming weeks such as new suburbs in Harare and Bulawayo, housing trends and a comparison of the Real Estate sectors of Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Wishing you a great day.
