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A Hamilton, Ont., home builder accused of constructing shoddy houses and exposed by CBC-TV's Marketplace earlier this year has had his builder's licence revoked.
Londonderry Residential Group Inc., owned by Brett Wright, can no longer build houses under Ontario's New Home Warranties Plan Act.
Londonderry "breached numerous warranties in homes it had constructed," according to a ruling Sept. 30 by the province's Licence Appeal Tribunal.
The tribunal concluded "the building defects identified are not minor and are not restricted to simply one or two unreasonable homeowners, as the Applicant alleges."
Tarion Warranty Corp., which administers the provincial legislation covering new home warranties, started getting complaints about Londonderry in 2006. It eventually received 74 consumer warranty claims from 27 homeowners.
Last January, Marketplace examined several homes Wright built. The consumer program showed basement floors that had caved in, walls missing their sheathing, poorly installed downspouts and other structural defects.
Marketplace also uncovered administrative problems. Construction on 18 homes began before the City of Hamilton issued building permits.
The Licence Appeal Tribunal issued a 36-page ruling, detailing problem after problem based on inspection reports over the past three years.
In one case, an inspector found "major deficiencies" in basement support as well as electrical problems and said "a number of these items posed health and safety concerns." An inspector estimated $105,430 in repairs were needed.
The tribunal ruling suggested Wright's company was incompetent and lacking in knowledge, although Wright has been in the construction industry since age 16 and built 90 homes.
"Applicant (Brett Wright) may have had good intentions but he did not have sufficient skills to produce a legally compliant structure," one inspector wrote in a report.
The tribunal said a third of the problems outlined by the 27 homeowners were not fixed, and many repairs that were made resulted in new complaints.
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