KUCHING: Three developers were ordered by the Sarawak Housing Purchasers Claims Tribunal to pay a total of RM228,455.11 to six house buyers for late delivery of their property.
Tribunal panel president Robert Elone Sireng said the developers were instructed to pay the claimants within 45 days of receiving the letter of judgement from the tribunal.
In the first case, a developer needed to pay RM97,871.89 to four claimants. Their property was supposed to be handed over in 2018 as they had signed the agreement in 2016, however, the developer only handed them over last year.
“The second case involved a developer needing to pay RM17,374.02 to a claimant. The developer said the delay was due to weather and also in getting approval for the road certificate (which were not taken into account).
“We, members of the tribunal, do not accept their word because they are supposed to make sure that the road and other utilities are completed at the same time.”
Elone added that the first two cases were in their defect liability period and the developers would be rectifying the identified defects.
“The third case is quite different as the claimant refused to take over the vacant property as she claimed that the defects were not rectified and there were things that the developer had not yet done.
“However, according to the sales and purchase agreement, when the building is an Occupational Permit (OP), the buyer is obliged to take over the vacant position of the property,” he said here on Tuesday (Jan 26).
He explained that the defect liability period was about 18 months after the handover of property, hence within that period, the developer had time to rectify whatever identified defects until the date the property was handed over.
“In this case, even though the claimant refused to take over the vacant property, we took into account the letter from the developer dated Nov 25, 2019 and we added 14 days to the date where we assumed that the property is handed over to her.
“Another matter that we need to take into account is from now on, the date when the purchaser make the booking fee, if they provide evidence to the court that they actually paid the booking fee earlier than the date of the sales and purchase agreement, is when we will start calculating the delay (from the date of the booking fee).
“The claimant made the booking fee in April 2015 and the sales and purchase agreement is July 2016 thus, there is more than a year delay and the number of days delayed has increased from that period.
“At the rate of eight per cent, the claimant is entitled to claim RM90,966 and she also claim for the common facilities which she is entitled to RM22,243.20. And the total award amounts to RM113,209.20.”
Also on the tribunal panel are Mohamad Abdul Aziz Ariffin and Trabawan Mandi.
