Hello Folks, Matthew H. here.

It has been noted by quite a few of you that the blog on the house building has become strangely silent.  The reason for that is that at this point in time the house building project is not fun!  In fact it is probably the second most sustained stressful period in my life (getting sober for me was the first), and it ranks pretty bad on the sustained stress level for Matthew R.

We received a new construction loan from BNZ, and new construction financing is significantly different here in NZ then we are used to in the US.  We also made the Significantly BAD decision to stay with Highmark Homes (the home office in Tauranga) as our supplier of materials as a kitset for the house in spite of the fact that their franchisee in the Hawkes Bay went into bankruptcy taking $10,000+ dollars of our money with them. The home office (the parent Franchiser) in spite of selling a “nationally trusted” brand in their advertisement, did not honor that money spent.  I know, 20/20 hindsight, I was an idiot for going with Highmark Homes home office in Tauranga after their failure to honor the debt of their franchisee; my only defense was that getting a new builder would have put us back another 6 months in construction.  In retrospect that would have been a good thing!

So why was the decision to stay with Highmark Homes such a bad decision? We had clearly informed them that we were building the home using a construction loan from BNZ – BNZ would only payout 80% of the assessed value of the house at any one time, and therefore payments to Highmark would be made in full by the end of the project but partial payments during construction would be restricted to that 80% limit at any one time, and would have to be shared with the Contractors doing the actual construction.  We received Verbal confirmation and assurances from Highmark’s home office (the owner and office manager) that they were familiar with this system, and it wouldn’t be a problem.  Well if you have been following Matthew R’s recent blog entries, you know it didn’t turn out that way. 

While we had lots of delays that were not our fault, and I'm sure that made Highmark management nervous about their exposure, we had kept them informed every step along the way of the status of the house and those delays.  In the end Highmark didn’t work with us, and just as we were getting ready to receive the shipment of materials for the interior of the house to finish it off, Highmark made the demand that we had to pay them in full (which would have resulted in our inability to pay the workers doing the actual construction a portion of what we owed them), or Highmark would not ship the final shipment.  Of course this would have meant we would have received all the materials but the workers / subcontractors that would be needed to put up the materials wouldn’t have been able to be paid, so they wouldn’t have shown up to do any work.

We were faced with a shell of a house, that was unlivable, no supplies to complete the construction, and a mortgage on the part that was done, that we probably couldn’t even sell in this current market for what was owed on a partially completed house.  Oh and just for fun, we had put in our 30 day notice at our rental place so we were facing having no place to live…  Needless to say life began to become VERY stressful.

We have managed to keep construction moving forward, and there have been significant new delays and problems as a snowball result of the original “spit the dummy” by Highmark Homes, but this project stopped being fun, or even interesting long ago.  We are living in the house, and every day it is less a “Green Acres” situation, but it still causes us sleepless nights, and days of scrambling to move construction forward as best we can.

So the long and the short of it all is, writing this blog is not pleasurable for us, and in fact I’ve toned down this entry SIGNIFICANTLY from what it originally said regarding the business practices of Highmark Homes Ltd. Entries just remind us how miserable and unhappy we are.  If we could do it over again, we would NEVER have started this mess.

Not to the worry, we have gone too far to back out now, we have no choice but finish out the house.  We know in 18 months when this is over and the house has been completed that we will be ready to laugh and find the good in the whole experience, when we can just enjoy our home without frantic phone calls, demands for money, juggling “we can do this, then that” issues.  We are still taking pictures and will have a whole story to tell you, but we think it would be best when we can relate that story without the bile and fear that runs in the background of our construction experience; we need some perspective. 

Consequently, we are putting the Blog on Hiatus for a while.  We will be back and share the rest of the experience with you once it is done (and everyone is paid off).  Check back after the New Year, we’ll let you know when we are back online and ready to share the horror and beauty that this house has become.

Matthew Hintzen