After a night of heavy rain in December 2017 we noticed in my partners apartment water was leaking in from outside underneath the floorboards and lifting them up causing water damage.
The building was built in 2015 so was only 2 years old and still covered by the building insurance of the original builders.
We contacted the builder to come and have a look, they came in Jan 2018 and said they would get back to us to find out what was going on.
6 months later of us constantly calling them they came out and did a water proofing test and discovered that the when built the balcony wasn't properly water proofed and that was causing the leak.
Another 6 months past of them trying to find tiles, floor boards, organise when to come and fix the balcony which included pulling up all exisiting tiles, re water proofing, new tiles, and pulling up damaged floor boards inside and re laying new ones, including skirting boards and painting.
During this time, my partner moved into my place and his apartment was then vacant (as of June 2018)
We couldn't organise a tentant to go in as we had yet to be told a date as to when the work was going to start, let alone finish, they kept saying next month, a month would go by and there was always another reason why they weren't yet starting.
Knowing the job that was going to be done would mean any potential tenant would have to move out for at least 4 weeks while the work was being done so we thought best to wait until its fixed to get a tenant in.
Jan 2019 the work started and is now as of 4th of March 2019 it will be completed tomorrow.
We spoke to the builder about being compensated for the loss of rental income due to the issues with the building- his response is that unless we have proof of rental documents saying it was vacant to rent then we he won't do anything, however, clearly we didn't bother with getting a formal rental appraisal and docs signed because we didn't know the date it was going to be available.
Our question is where do we stand with this given the circumstances? Where do we find the accurate advice on where to go from here?
The building was built in 2015 so was only 2 years old and still covered by the building insurance of the original builders.
We contacted the builder to come and have a look, they came in Jan 2018 and said they would get back to us to find out what was going on.
6 months later of us constantly calling them they came out and did a water proofing test and discovered that the when built the balcony wasn't properly water proofed and that was causing the leak.
Another 6 months past of them trying to find tiles, floor boards, organise when to come and fix the balcony which included pulling up all exisiting tiles, re water proofing, new tiles, and pulling up damaged floor boards inside and re laying new ones, including skirting boards and painting.
During this time, my partner moved into my place and his apartment was then vacant (as of June 2018)
We couldn't organise a tentant to go in as we had yet to be told a date as to when the work was going to start, let alone finish, they kept saying next month, a month would go by and there was always another reason why they weren't yet starting.
Knowing the job that was going to be done would mean any potential tenant would have to move out for at least 4 weeks while the work was being done so we thought best to wait until its fixed to get a tenant in.
Jan 2019 the work started and is now as of 4th of March 2019 it will be completed tomorrow.
We spoke to the builder about being compensated for the loss of rental income due to the issues with the building- his response is that unless we have proof of rental documents saying it was vacant to rent then we he won't do anything, however, clearly we didn't bother with getting a formal rental appraisal and docs signed because we didn't know the date it was going to be available.
Our question is where do we stand with this given the circumstances? Where do we find the accurate advice on where to go from here?
