The goods are not correct, the board shrinks, leaks, and the problem of reducing distribution is endless.
Buying a well-decorated house brings a lot of troubles
Our trainee reporter Zhang Shoukun
Our reporter Han Dandong
In October last year, Wang Dan (pseudonym), a citizen of Hefei, Anhui Province, handed over the new house she bought three years ago, but she was dumbfounded when she went to collect the house full of joy: the sliding door in the bathroom was broken, and the sliding door in the kitchen could not. Moving, not smooth; the balcony has only a simple fence, no decoration; there is no ceiling in the house, only a simple circle of plaster lines; the walls are cracked, the roof is uneven, and the wooden floors of the 3 bedrooms are warped...
"If you don't want to buy a well-decorated house, don't buy it!" Wang Dan told the "Rules of Law Daily" reporter that he used to think about buying a well-decorated house, which could save the trouble of decoration. You only need to buy furniture and home appliances to move in with your bags. Now It seems so naive, many places have to be smashed and redone, and it will take almost half a year to move in.
The reporter's investigation found that in recent years, quality problems of finely decorated houses have occurred from time to time, mainly due to incorrect goods, shrinkage, water leakage, and distribution reduction.
On the China Judgment Documents Network, the reporter searched with the keywords of "fine decoration" and "quality problems", and there were more than 14,000 related civil cases.
Why do all kinds of quality problems occur frequently in finely decorated rooms?
How can we make the phenomenon of "buyers have been struggling with the quality of decoration for a long time" to be radically cured?
In this regard, the reporter conducted an investigation and interview.
Introduce hardcover policies in many places
Refined decoration into the mainstream of the market
In February of this year, Wu Di (pseudonym) from Changshu, Jiangsu handed over the new house he bought two years ago, but he has not moved into the new home until now.
Wu Di told reporters that the main reasons that hindered his stay were the quality of fine decoration and the decoration style.
"In recent years, new houses in urban areas are all finely decorated, and rough houses are hard to find, but finely decorated houses also have some quality problems and need to be repaired. The decoration style is all "copy and paste", so I can only try to find some houses that match my own aesthetics, but even so, the subsequent renovation is still a big project." Wu Di said.
According to CRIC (China Real Estate Information Group) data, from January 2021 to June 2022, the 50 real estate companies it focuses on will have a refined decoration rate of 86% in first-tier cities.
Why are there more and more refined decorations in newly developed real estate?
In recent years, Shanghai, Zhejiang, Hainan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan and many other provinces and cities have successively issued "hardcover policies", and many cities require that most residential deliveries in the future should be fully decorated.
For example, Shanghai requires that from November 2017 onwards, the proportion of the area of fully furnished residential buildings in the area of newly-built commercial residential buildings (excluding low-rise residential buildings with three floors and below) shall be as follows: the urban area within the outer ring line shall reach 100 %.
According to Jiao Yanpeng, a professor at East China University of Political Science and Law, the vigorous promotion of fine decoration in some places is mainly for public interests, that is, after the delivery of the rough house, the owner may infringe on the rights of other owners in the community during the decoration process, or there may be construction safety and construction waste. pollution of the environment, etc.
Wu Chunfeng, a lawyer from Beijing Yinghe Law Firm, who used to be in charge of operations and legal affairs in a large real estate company, believes that the promotion of refined decoration has a legal basis and rationality.
"A major development direction of the construction industry is energy saving and environmental protection. The finely decorated houses are uniformly decorated by the developers, and a large number of energy-saving and environmental protection materials can be used. At the same time, it is also for the safety of the main structure of the house. In practice, many owners' decoration is quite brutal. Some even cut out a large piece of the load-bearing wall in order to make shoe racks. If several houses in a building carry out this kind of savage decoration, the consequences of earthquakes or other disasters will be disastrous.”
Does the developer have the right to decide to make the new real estate into hardcover houses?
Will consumers' right of choice be compromised?
Wu Chunfeng said: "As a producer of commercial housing, developers have the right to produce products according to their own wishes and principles that are beneficial to them without violating laws and regulations. Therefore, developers can make new houses into rough delivery or hardcover delivery. Yes, there is no 'forced' decision issue."
However, a headache for many people is that, compared with the model house before delivery, the finely decorated house that was originally prepared to be "packed in" is the difference between the buyer's show and the seller's show.
The standard of fine decoration is not clear
There are developers who are dark and dark
In September 2019, Ms. Su from Lanzhou, Gansu purchased a fully furnished off-plan house in a community in Lanzhou, with an area of 106 square meters. The house price at that time was 6,800 yuan per square meter.
"This community is all finely decorated houses, and the rough houses in the same area during the same period were about 5,800 yuan per square meter. At that time, I considered that if buying rough houses would cost a lot of money for decoration, it would be better to buy hardcovers to save worry and effort." Su The lady said that after the house was handed over on July 1 this year, she found that the windows in the finely decorated room were not tightly closed, and the water meter was broken.
Especially the face bricks of toilets and kitchens, many of which are empty, inlaid incorrectly, the bricks are damaged, and the walls are uneven.
"It is said that it is a refined decoration, but it is actually not as good as a simple decoration. I have been contacting maintenance for the past two months, but after the handover, the developer has been 'cold' to us. The place is not repaired," Ms Su said.
Before purchasing, Ms. Su had seen the model room in the sales office, "It was because she was satisfied with the model room that she bought it."
The reporter found in the investigation that there are not a few people like Ms. Su who are attracted by model houses and choose finely decorated houses.
According to the requirements of the "Guidelines for the Implementation of Commodity Residential Renovation in One Place", fine-decorated housing refers to all the fixed surfaces of all functional spaces before handing over the house keys.
But in practice, because there are many problems with fine decoration, "buyers have been struggling with the quality of fine decoration for a long time" has become the voice of more and more house buyers.
The reporter found that on social software and e-commerce platforms, there are also bloggers and merchants who specialize in fine decoration and remodeling.
Hao Feng, who has worked in a real estate agency in Tianjin for 9 years, told reporters that the decoration standard in the ordinary residential market is mostly between 1,000 and 1,500 yuan per square meter. In order to pursue comfort and a higher quality of life, some positioning The high housing decoration standard is more than 2,000 yuan per square meter.
"There is a quasi-existing house that can be handed over at the end of this year. The average price of a rough house is 27,000 yuan per square meter, and the average price of a hardcover is 30,000 yuan per square meter. This is a relatively high standard for hardcover. Pretend', no ceiling." Hao Feng said.
According to CRIC’s analysis of the refined decoration launches of 50 key housing companies in 22 cities from January 2021 to June 2022, the average level of the decoration standard/average transaction price ratio of all launched projects is 10%, that is The decoration standard accounts for about 10% of the cost of buying a house.
Why is the quality of well-decorated houses still not guaranteed after so much decoration fee is charged per square meter?
Jiao Yanpeng believes that the main reason for the above problems is that the developer and the owner are not clear about the standard of fine decoration in the house sales contract.
"Commercial housing sales contracts are often format contracts, and buyers hardly change the content of the contract. In order to leave more profit space for themselves, developers often only make general agreements on the above-mentioned fine decoration standards, which are "dark and dark" style. Defective performance provides an opportunity, which causes buyers to feel that the decoration part is worthless after the house is delivered." Jiao Yanpeng said.
According to Yang Qinfa, director of the Institute of Real Estate Policy and Law of East China University of Political Science and Law, since my country's finely decorated houses are only a policy regulation and a principled requirement, there are no specific standards and operational norms. This standard is determined by developers. In order to avoid the price limit regulations for pre-sale licenses, many developers count the price increase as decoration costs, which not only avoids the price limit for first-hand houses, but also damages the interests of consumers.
"For renovated houses, many developers make provisions on the content of the decoration standards by signing a decoration contract with the owner or signing the decoration clause in the sales contract. The general practice is that the developer renovates a model room, and the quality of the bedroom decoration will be reflected in the model. According to Article 31 of the Measures for the Administration of Sales of Commodity Houses, real estate development enterprises should explain whether the quality, equipment and decoration of the actual commercial houses delivered are consistent with the model houses when selling commercial houses. , the actual delivered commercial housing should be consistent with the model housing.
Therefore, the quality of decoration delivered to homebuyers should not be lower than the quality level of the model room.
"However, because the minimum cost of decoration is not stipulated, when the final decoration room delivered by the developer is inconsistent with the standard stipulated in the decoration contract or with the decoration quality of the model room, it is difficult for the owner to specify the essential difference, which involves the environmental protection of decoration materials and the quality of decoration. The actual effect, etc., it is not easy for consumers to provide evidence, and it is difficult to protect their rights." Yang Qinfa said.
Formulate and improve acceptance standards
Solve the problem of wrong goods
How to solve the problem that the hardcover house is not on the right board, so that the owner can really save his worry and effort after buying a hardcover house?
"Refined housing is the general trend, so the top priority of relevant departments and developers is to take multiple measures to eliminate consumers' worries and concerns." Wu Chunfeng suggested that the housing and urban-rural development departments should introduce management measures for finely decorated commercial housing, and formulate fine decoration acceptance. The market supervision and management department and the housing and urban-rural development department improve the model text of the "Contract for the Sale and Purchase of Commercial Houses", and require developers to list in detail the "fine decoration list", specifying tiles, floors, electrical appliances The materials and brands of the main parts such as switches and overall cabinets; the developer and the buyer sign a detailed supplementary agreement for the refined decoration part, and the issues that the buyer cares about are clearly stipulated in the supplementary agreement.
On July 20 this year, the Higher People's Court of Jiangsu Province announced to the public the "Guidelines for the Trial of Cases of Disputes over the Decoration Quality of the Sale and Purchase Contracts of Fully Furnished Commercial Houses", which clarified that the seller's sales advertisements and publicity materials made explanations and promises about the decoration quality requirements. If the conclusion of the commercial housing sales contract and the price determination have a significant impact, it shall be regarded as the content of the contract.
If the seller sets up a model house, the decoration quality of the delivered commercial house shall be equivalent to that of the model house.
At the same time, the determination and calculation methods are clarified for the responsibility for price reduction and how much to reduce the price for quality problems.
Yang Qinfa believes that the regulatory authorities should strictly investigate and punish the behavior of using finely decorated houses to evade the price limit, to split the house price, and to collect prices other than the house price, thereby evading the government's price limit policy.
"Consumers should read the relevant clauses carefully and understand their meanings when they sign a contract for fine decoration, and do not omit the terms written in the contract. If the fine decoration clauses in the fine decoration contract between the developer and the owner or the pre-sale contract of commercial housing, There is no specific decoration standard, only the quotation of decoration is stipulated. When the house is delivered, if the owner questions the actual cost of decoration, the developer should provide the basis for the actual decoration cost. If the quotation standard is not met, the developer should bear the corresponding responsibility.” Yang Qinfa said.
In Wu Chunfeng's view, the premise of rights protection is evidence.
As the owner, the first thing to do is to keep all the evidence related to the house before and after the signing of the commercial house sales contract. The evidence that the developer promised but not written in the contract is particularly important.
For example, some developers will promote the effect of fine decoration through sand table models, floor plans, model rooms, WeChat public accounts, etc., and relevant materials should be retained; WeChat chat records with sales representatives should not be deleted arbitrarily.
In addition, if a problem is discovered after a hardcover has been occupied for a period of time, maintenance can still be requested.
Article 7 of "Measures for Quality Warranty of Housing Construction Projects" stipulates that the minimum warranty period for decoration projects is two years.
"Construction Engineering Quality Management Regulations" also have the same provisions.
The warranty period of the decoration part of the finely decorated house should be at least 2 years, and the part of the house itself should follow the relevant regulations, such as the waterproof of the bathroom is 5 years.
"As for the standard of warranty, there are no specific provisions in the laws and regulations. But in practice, the warranty is based on solving the owner's problem. I have represented a case of mold on the wall. The developer hopes to put thermal insulation in the house, so It saves a lot of money and facilitates construction, but the owners did not agree, and finally the entire building was covered with a layer of thermal insulation material." Wu Chunfeng said.
In addition to the quality of fine decoration, the issue of secondary charges has also been criticized.
On a third-party complaint platform, the reporter saw a collective complaint against suspected contract fraud in the process of handing over houses in a community in Lanzhou City.
Ms. Su said that in the case of purchasing the hardcover house and no secondary decoration, the property forced the owner to charge the owner a decoration waste cleaning fee of 6 yuan per square meter and a decoration service fee of 3.5 yuan per square meter. Annual property fee, the owner's large items will not be allowed into the community without payment, and the key will not be given without payment.
After negotiating with the seller and the property for many times, the rectification solution has not been seen for a long time.
Experts interviewed believe that, according to the regulations on property management, if the owner needs to decorate the house, he should inform the property service enterprise, and the property service enterprise should inform the owner of the prohibited behaviors and precautions in the decoration and decoration of the house.
It can be seen that in the process of renovating the house, the property only has the obligation to inform and has no right to charge.
Yang Qinfa said that according to relevant laws and regulations, in addition to charging property management fees and other agency fees, property companies cannot additionally charge owners for non-existing decoration waste removal fees, decoration service fees, etc.
For such charges by the property and developer, the owner can complain to the relevant department. If the developer threatens not to give the key without paying the fee, the consumer can ask the developer to bear the responsibility for the breach of contract for not delivering the house on time.