Building Defect Advice

Jon2263

Hi, I'm hoping that some of you lovely people might have some opinions or experience that may help me.

My family and I have been renting a 4 year old property now for 7 months, and at the begining of the week unfortunately due to the terrential rain our garage decided to let plenty of water in. It came from a hole at the back of the garage. It has now been discovered that the damp course for the property at the rear has been set below ground level, so all the mortar has been eaten away letting the water in.

The landlords are persuing this through the NHBC, however realistically no repairs would be made to the property until after Christmas. Alot of the contents inside the garage have been badly damaged and our contents insurance say that its not up to them to cover as it is down to a building defect.

I have asked about our contents and the possability of a reduction in rent until the repairs had been made due to having to store all our belongings inside the house taking up room, however the agent was totally negative about both these points.

Does anyone have any advice or opinions please?

Fire_Fox

Have you contents insurers been out to view the site or put anything in writing? Have you read your policy terms and conditions? You need to claim for your losses against the landlord, deal with them directlly because the agent has no say in the matter. Deal with this in writing, take photographs of everything damaged whilst in situ, if they can claim on their insurance their loss adjustors may want to see it. This has nothing to do with your rent which is due as per your AST, if you need additional storage ask the landlord to fund that.

afm_2

I was told that in those cases the insurance will pay you and then try to get their money back from the builders/NHBC. Not sure if that's true but it makes sense given that you have paid to protect your contents against any adversity.