WORKS NOTICES & AUDITS | Design Review Group

Estate developers often go to great effort to set a design vision for an estate, and then to codify that with a set of design standards. Endorsing house plans as complying with the design code helps achieve the vision. However, much can change between a plan and the finished construction. Auditing houses and gardens after occupancy and landscaping also helps achieve the developer's vision. Auditing communicates to lot owners that they should treat the design rules as seriously as the estate developer.

When a person purchases a lot in an estate with a design code, they sign an agreement that they will abide by the code and so will their new neighbours. By doing that, they protect the value in what for most buyers is their single biggest investment. It gives them confidence that they won’t have something like a bright purple house next door, devaluing their own house.

Works notices and audits

This confidence builds when they see an auditor in the street, and when they hear that a nearby lot owner has received a notice to replace the ugly fencing along the side street. Knowing that auditing for compliance with the design code occurs, lot owners recognise that the estate developer treats the code seriously, and that they should as well. Auditing deters people from deliberately not complying with the design code.

However, if no auditing occurs, lot owners soon realise that the design code can be flaunted with no consequences. This starts early, when they see that lots sold before theirs are still unbuilt, months after construction was supposed to start. Most design codes contain a requirement that construction commences and finishes within a certain time after sale. Auditing for compliance with these timelines alerts people at an early stage that they need to comply with the design code.

Most non-compliances occur in work undertaken by the lot owners, or tradespeople they have engaged, after the house builder has finished. The owners are usually unaware that the work is not complying. These non-compliant works are usually fencing, planting, hardscaping and the siting of ancillary items such as aerials and air conditioning units.

We first issue lot owners with a ‘friendly’ notice requesting rectification within a few months. If needed, we then issue a more strongly worded notice requiring rectification and threatening legal action. If that produces no results, the estate developer may engage a lawyer.

When an owner-occupier has unwittingly done non-compliant work, he or she is often prepared to rectify it, especially if notified shortly after the work is done. Investors can be less accommodating, looking to minimise their own expense but gain value from the high standard of the estate around their lot.

Rectification rates fall as the time increases between the work being done and the corrective action notices being sent. To balance rectification rates and expense, we typically recommend audits occur every three months.

Gaudy colours devalue the house, neighbouring lots and the estate.

This house scores a trifecta: an overgrown front garden, a ramshackle wire fence, and a side fence not set back from the front of the house. Non-complying development like this lowers the tone of the whole estate.

In many estates, photovoltaic panels are prohibited on the front of the roof.

Why audit finished development?

You keep faith with lot owners that you are protecting the value of their investment.
Lot owners realise they should comply with the design code.
The estate looks better.
The developer’s reputation is enhanced.
It adds thousands of dollars of value per lot to the next stage and the next estate.