The NSW Department of Fair Trading has released changes to the NSW Home Building Act which relate to the day to day work of PV Designers and Installers in NSW.

Key points of the article include:

• simpler written home building contracts are required for small jobs worth between $1,001 and $5,000
• all residential building work worth more than $20,000 must be covered by mandatory home warranty insurance. The previous threshold was $12,000
• aligning the time periods for statutory warranties on home building work with those for home warranty insurance (ie. 6 years for structural defects; 2 years for non-structural defects). The previous statutory time limit was 7 years for both structural and non-structural defects
• the minimum level of home warranty insurance cover is increased from $300,000 to $340,000
• home owners only pay $250 to make a home warranty insurance claim, rather than the current $500 cost
• strengthening the definition of parties ‘related to’ a builder or developer to prevent abuse of the home warranty insurance scheme.