Due Diligence: 1 June 2023
Further to the warning last week: I have been contacted by a few people (privately) with respect to concerns they have with people they were dealing with. One in particular was to do with a company that worried me a lot.
As developers, there is little protection. It is the big bad world with little consumer protection.
Another developer contacted me last night as he was doing all the right due diligence and found out interesting things and wanted to check one or two findings… one mere aspect of a contractor’s claim failed my ‘sniff test’… and when he provided me with a link… it was bang on.
If you don’t do any due diligence then best you don’t try to operate in this space, or hope that fortune favours your path. Property Development involves wearing your big boy pants… so to speak.
So here are links for you to use:
Start by searching the NZ Company’s website for the individual’s name and their company name – the results there can provide direction (use your noggin and connect dots i.e. names and companies).
https://companies-register.companiesoffice.govt.nz
Move on to the Licensed Building Practitioners website and cross-check if there are issues there – check if their license has expired too.
Then also do a quick screen of the archaic databases here: this can be eye-popping (use a computer for it, you may find popcorn worthy reading in it too).
http://www.nzlii.org/databases.html
Additionally, OPES Partners have some good insight in their podcasts and website where they call out particular developers. I don’t have a link to the appropriate page, I have provided it in the past, so do your own leg-work.
You are effectively nearly marrying your partner… it is a contract and it is hard to get out of. If they are smart, they will do the same to you… a divorce (breaking of contract or collapse of company) will be painful and can break you.
