Congratulations: you've just moved into your new home. Even while you're still unpacking, you may start noticing things: rough patches on the walls, tiles that don't quite match the rest, water pooling in the shower stall after you wash, a living-room shutter that creaks when you raise it. What do you do? Keep an open phone line to the site manager and report every defect the moment you spot it? The law is more modest than that: a resident must report construction defects within a reasonable time of discovering them.
That wording sounds vague, and it is meant to. The legislator recognizes that an average resident doesn't have the tools, knowledge or experience to identify every construction defect in the apartment and report it correctly.
So even with the defects above, some residents won't recognize a defect the contractor is directly responsible for, and will assume, say, that a creaking shutter is simply how the mechanism works. And what about defects that are harder to spot, such as whether the gap between a shutter's slats and the window seals properly against a strong wind?
The examples are endless. Residents often feel that the site manager and the contractor's staff are responsive and listen to their concerns, and conclude they have no need for a home inspection (bedek bayit) of their own.
That feeling, however understandable, and a sign of a healthy relationship with the professionals, is mistaken: the engineer's job is never to attack or undermine the contractor. It's an objective one: to identify construction and design defects a resident wouldn't spot alone, and to document them so they can be resolved quickly and efficiently.
Even when the contractor does respond to residents' requests, that's no reason to skip an expert engineer's home inspection report. The misconception runs so deep that we've met residents who feel awkward toward the contractor simply for hiring an inspection engineer, as if it might cause offense.
That feeling is entirely unnecessary. In fact, the opposite is true: submitting a clear, orderly building inspection report is really an expression of trust that the contractor will honor his commitment to hand over a home that meets the standards and regulations.
The engineers of Arad Bedek Bayit, led by building engineer Ron Arad, whom courts appoint as their own expert on construction defects. The company has been inspecting apartments and buildings since 2001. Engineer Ron Arad · More about the company