Below is a summary of part of a lecture engineer Ron Arad gave to members of the Bar Association on June 20, 2016.
The Sale (Apartments) Law covers two periods during which the contractor has obligations toward residents: the inspection period and the warranty period.
How long does the inspection period last? It is not a fixed length of time: it depends on which item in the apartment is covered. For dampness, the inspection period (tkufat bedek) is four years; for plumbing, also four years; for cracks, five years; and for structural problems in stone cladding, seven years.
What happens once the inspection period ends? You move into what the law defines as the contractor's warranty period. Unlike the inspection period, this one is uniform for every element in the apartment: three additional years, starting immediately after the inspection period ends.
For stone cladding, for example, seven years of inspection plus three years of warranty add up to ten years during which the resident can require the contractor to address construction defects.
Still, why split it into two periods, an inspection period and a contractor warranty period? During the inspection period, the burden of proof sits with the contractor: if you claim a defect, the contractor has to make the repair.
If it refuses, it has to prove why it is exempt. During the warranty period, that burden shifts to the resident. The contractor can then argue the damage happened during the move, during a renovation, or through careless use, for example cracked floors caused by the moving company.
What is the best time to get a home inspection? At handover, the resident has the most leverage to get the contractor to make repairs right away. It is technically much easier to demand fixes while the construction crews are still on site, close to the handover date.
Legally, the contractor remains obligated throughout the whole inspection period, but once its crews have moved on to the next project, its motivation to move quickly drops. It may try to avoid the issue, or drag things out, and you want to be smart as well as right.
An apartment can contain around 8,000 types of construction defects, so it is not enough to rely on what you can see: the odds of spotting them all yourself are slim. You do not want to find out years later that something was built against the standard, that the warranty period has already passed, and that the repair is now on you.
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