Lighthouse NZ Limited offers independent guidance and support to the owners of leaky homes. We assist both individual home owners and bodies corporate by providing effective strategies to manage their way through the repair process and support with their claims to recover the costs associated with the repair of their property.
The discovery of a leaky home is a daunting prospect for most homeowners and the task ahead often appears too overwhelming to contemplate. Lighthouse's directors have all owned leaky homes and know how stressful this can be.
Lighthouse assists owners by helping them to build knowledge around the process in front of them and breaking this down into easy to follow steps so that the path becomes clearer, the tasks manageable and the course of action understandable. With the appropriate support and guidance, owners can make sound decisions early in the process, take control of the situation and work towards a resolution in the quickest possible timeframe with minimized cost and stress.
Lighthouse is completely independent from any other specialists working in this area. The team at Lighthouse understand the significant financial burden that results from owning a leaky home and the company has been established with this in mind, with a minimal overhead structure, so that our services can be provided at a reasonable rate.
Very soon Lighthouse will become part of the newly established HomeOwners & Buyers Association of New Zealand, HOBANZ. The following letter from John Gray, co-founder of Lighthouse and the Founding President of HOBANZ provides a little history as to how we have got to this point and the vision for this new Association.
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Lighthouse NZ Limited was established in December 2006 to provide independent advice and guidance to home owners struggling to resolve their leaky home issues. Two years on, as a result of the dedication of our team and with funds generated from the delivery of services to our expanding client base, the company has grown significantly and we are now breathing life into the Home Owners& Buyers Association of New Zealand, HOBANZ.
HOBANZ is a fledgling not-for-profit organisation established to represent home owners and buyers throughout New Zealand and provide a wide range of services associated with home ownership. You could say HOBANZ will be the AA for home owners.
There are over 1.6 million home owners in New Zealand and right now there is no organisation to represent them. In the time Lighthouse has existed we have been approached by owners with all sorts of issues, not just leaky homes, who have nowhere to turn for help. You only need to tune into Fair Go to see how many of the items are related to home ownership in some way....and for every one that makes it to air and has the weight of the programme behind them to help resolve their issues there are many more that never make it onto your TV screens. In the future, as members of HOBANZ, they will have somewhere to turn.
HOBANZ was registered as an incorporated society in December 2007with 15 founding members and a set of guiding rules. Development of the Association over the last year has been slowed by the current demands on our time from leaky home owners and the limited finance we have had available. Despite this we have made the time to develop relationships within Government circles to the point where we are hopeful of support as we seek funds from various sources to allow the Association to establish the infrastructure required to open membership and deliver a wide range of benefits and services.
The next significant step in the development of HOBANZ will be the transfer of the ownership of Lighthouse across to the Association where it will become the commercial arm of HOBANZ. The HOBANZ Board has agreed in principle for this to go ahead and is currently doing due diligence on Lighthouse. Under a new name the current Lighthouse team will continue to provide services to assist our current clients, who we hope will all become HOBANZ members, and we will also start to develop services in other areas to assist new members. The current shareholder/directors of Lighthouse will become employees of the company and will continue to develop the business in ways that will provide the greatest benefit to HOBANZ members. If surpluses are generated from operations these will flow into the Association assisting it to achieve its objectives.
Although there will continue to be a cost associated with many of the services provided, it has always been our objective to be in a position to assist home owners who find themselves in difficult situations without the financial wherewithal to resolve them. Where appropriate, this will be done at no cost to the member. Obtaining Not-for-Profit (tax free) status for the association and hopefully receiving grants and other funding should enable the Association to achieve that objective. We will also be seeking to register the Association as a charitable organisation under the Charities Act and wish to contribute back into the community through housing and other associated projects.
When Roger Levie and I first got together to set up Lighthouse we investigated the possibility of establishing the organisation as a not for profit but the immediate demand for services made it more expedient to start with a limited liability company. To allow the company to get up and running we agreed to invest our time for little financial return. Early in 2008 Janet Pawson joined us as a 3rdshareholder/director and together we have continued to develop the business based on this approach. The three of us all have a personal understanding of the stresses that owning a leaky home can cause so it has been our objective to provide services that would help owners to resolve their issues more quickly at less cost without adding to their financial burden.
We are now two years on and we have recently made an additional cash injection into the business to allow us to continue to grow to meet the needs of the constant stream of new owners looking for our support and guidance. To date we have not received any outside funding but this will need to change shortly if we are to continue to develop a sustainable and credible organisation that provides tangible benefits to owners.
The basic principles we are building into our organisation are those of integrity, empathy, honesty and openness. I am very proud of what we have achieved to date and I'm sure that our clients have found our services of great value and in most, if not all cases, we have saved them money along the way and achieved better outcomes than they would otherwise have achieved. Our organisation has no political motivation, we are simply driven to ensure that the interests of homeowners throughout the country are properly represented and that they have a place to turn when they have issues with their homes that they cannot resolve themselves.
Most recently HOBANZ has been asked to be a part of the reference group being established by the Minister of Building & Construction to investigate the true extent of the leaky homes problem. We have also been asked to provide our ideas on how the current system can be improved so it better serves owners of leaky homes. This gives us confidence that we are on the right track, and the motivation to continue to develop and grow the organisation.
HOBANZ has also been invited to join the reference group established by the Ministry of Justice to look at the implementation of the Real Estate Agents Act.
Had we not approached the development of HOBANZ in the way we have I don't think we would have got it off the ground. When I talk to people about the Association and the vision we have the general response is "what a great idea, why didn't someone set that up long ago?" It's a pity no one has as we could have all benefited, for example, by having a strong group advocating for our rights back in 1991 when the then new Building Act was being introduced. We have a huge task ahead of us, there is great concern about the state of the building industry, the quality of our housing stock and the health of our homes - these are all areas where home owners must have input if we are to properly resolve these matters for the good of all New Zealanders.
For more information about the The Home Owners & Buyers Association of New Zealand Inc. please go to www.hobanz.org.nz.
Regards,
John Gray
Shareholder/Director, Lighthouse NZ Limited
Founding President, HOBANZ
To contact Lighthouse please email us at info@lighthousenz.co.nz or call (09) 376-5288.