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Building Contract

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BrianHuntley
  8/18/2014 21:58 EST

Can anyone recommend a lawyer who deals with building contracts between a land owner and a builder?
I want to start building soon but also want the contract to be vetted by a good lawyer to avoid any "gotchas"...
Thanks for your advise
Brian

brslomo
  8/19/2014 06:11 EST

A contract here is not worth much more than the paper it's written on. In the end, what you want is for the construction to be build in a certain way with a certain quality of materials and workmanship.

In the end, if what you get doesn't live up to your expectations, what are you going to do? You can only really do one thing and that is to take the builders and/or engineers to court. Good luck with that. You are a foreigner in a foreign land and the legal system is not going to work for you the way it might work in your home country.

The local people in your area have a certain way of doing things and you are not going to change that. And if you bring in outsiders from the big city to do the work, the locals will be upset because you have deprived them of what little work they could have expected. Who knows what the effect of that will be.

In the end, you are going to get a "hollow block" structure with whatever quality of block is available. I don't think you should lose a lot of sleep over this. Just get used to the way things are done in Phils. and try to enjoy it.

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BrianHuntley
  8/19/2014 06:42 EST

Believe in God, but tie up your camel...

standupguy
  8/19/2014 12:58 EST

brsloomo - your wife can go the the baranga captain to make a complaint (letters & pictures needed) . Our roof was built so the grade moved water down against a wall and into our ceiling. They kept trying to seal it, but it never worked. The wall had to be raised so the roof grade moved water off to the gutters in the other direction. We only discovered this after we bought a ladder to inspect the roof after filling & repainting the kitchen and bedroom ceilings three times. After the dispute was settled, we had to pay 50% of the materials and no labor. Steel trusses were used to rebuild. We purchased all the materials ourselves mostly at City Hardware in Davao though our engineer (LOL) was using good materials up to then. We had to be at the site every day to ensure the workers weren't gambling at cards next door. Still things were not done as we asked. The problem is no power tools. They use putty to finish wood surfaces (no sanding) and insist on marine plywood for everything including baseboards which they cut with a hand saw.. The paint supply shops like Ace hardware employ young people who have no idea what type of paint to use. Now we use the carpenters we found at a woodworking shop a couple blocks away. They have a table saw there. These guys did a good job for cheap. I let my wife speak Visayan to them. They still used putty to finish wood with. W-T-H.!

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