New home turns into nightmare

23/06/2008 The Star By Chelsea L. Y. Ng

KUALA LUMPUR: Housewife Chong Siew Har thought her dream of owning a vacation home by the beach had finally come true when she bought a bungalow lot in Sepang nine years ago.

Her hope turned into a nightmare when half way through its construction she noticed severe defects on the building located just a five-minute drive away from the Bagan Lalang beach.

Walking into her supposed dream home on June 21, 2002, the 58-year-old had the rudest shock of her life when she saw that the house was built several feet off its base, making it severely slanted; rusty water was gushing out from all the sockets on the walls, a rain gutter channelled into the master bedroom and water seeped out of the kitchen floor.

Also troubling her was that the nearly completed house did not look like the plan presented by the developer earlier.

“Windows were missing from the built-up design. Now, the house is completely different from the plan,” she told the Sessions Court here on Wednesday when testifying in a suit she brought against the developer, Hong Leong Housing Sdn Bhd.

Chong complained to the contractor and later to the developer but the latter only made minor repairs.

The main defects remained unresolved and she filed a suit against the developer in 2006 claiming RM150,429.32 for losses suffered.

Questioned by her counsel Thomas Wong, Chong said the house was never completed and she had deemed her sale and purchase contract as having been terminated when the developer failed to rectify the omissions and severe defects.

“Imagine a gutter in the room.

“Ask anyone and he will tell you that a gutter is used to channel rainwater off the roof, not into the house,” she said.

“There was a pillar. It was crooked and shaped like the letter ‘c’. When I complained, they just shaved away the bulging parts and cosmetically covered the curved-in part. It actually did not solve the problem,” she added.

Chong said she wrote numerous letters to the developer complaining about the defects but did not receive any positive response.

The developer’s counsel, Sonia Abraham, in cross-examining Chong, contended that the building plans were not totally in the control of her client and it was subject to approval by local authorities.

Sonia is expected to ask further questions when the hearing resumes on July 17.

In its defence, the developer claims that the changes to the building plans in the construction agreement were made on the architect’s instructions and carried out to comply with local authority requirements.

It said the adjustments made and the slight differences raised were held by the architect to be within tolerance.