Inspection on New Development - Recom. or not?

Not required though I would recommend it. The inspector will look for things that you may miss- items that they check for on a daily basis. New developments are prone to problems the first few years. Get to know your neighbors in the building because it will help build your case should larger building problems need to be addressed.

1 - Do the inspection
2 - Fire your lawyer

I concur -

1 - Do the inspection
2 - Fire your lawyer

I'm actually one of the first tenants moving in. I know someone who is a constructor/electrician. Just wondering if an inspection will find items separate to what he'll find. Also just to add, heat is electric.

"I'm actually one of the first tenants moving in." - That changes things.

1 - Fire your lawyer
2 - DEFINITELY do the inspection.

If you search the board, you'll find all kinds of nightmare stories about new developments. For a major investment like this, it's time/money well spent.

out of curiosity, where is this new development?

Keepnitreal: how many units are in this development?

When I bought an apartment in a new development, my lawyer INSISTED I have the building inspected, not just the apartment. He said that a lot of new places are "flash and trash" designs, although the developer of the site was not as bad as most. The inspector warned me about some problems with the bricks. He also pointed out that the roof was a new design that hadn't been tested out yet in the city. He said the heating and hot water system were excellent since they had extra boilers that kicked in to handle peaks. He said that there should have been one more elevator for "service", but the elevator capacity for the building was within guidelines. As for the apartment, he said the construction was reasonably done, but the kitchen and bath finishes were "knock offs" of better quality products.

He was absolutely correct. The roof failed the first winter, as it did in every other new construction in the neighborhood. I was glad that I did not take one of the apartments with a roof or terrace over it! The brick work had to be fixed within 5 years. He was also right about the elevators, especially when they started to age and had to be taken out of service for repairs. This became a big problem when elevators were being repaired while contractors needed them for deliveries, etc. for the kitchen/bath renovations.

there is 33 units available in this building. Development is in Corona. jelj13, just curious what happened after you got the inspection. Did you renegotiate or asked for sponsor to get this taken care off?

Get inspection.

Every potential problem found by the inspector was covered by warranties supplied by the various firms that did the work for the sponsor. The attitude was "if it isn't broken now, there's no problem".

The roof failed every place in every building where it was installed on the West Side. The manufacturer replaced it twice for free in our building. However, the Board didn't realize that the same roof was used in the garden, the roof top of the garage and health club/meeting room facilities. Since the area was covered by raised bed boxes and paving tiles, the leaks weren't apparent until after the warranty expired. That was a $200,000 repair!

The big drawback is that it takes forever to prove there is a problem under the warranty and then schedule the repairs, often taken many, many, months. However, some of the other firms dragged their tales and played games hoping the warranties would run out. Law suits were rampant.

To boot, we found that the bricks were non-standard and they tried to make repairs with bricks that were readily available. The Board was able to find the last lot of the original bricks and bought all of them.

Many of the apartments affected had put in very high end furnishings that were destroyed by the brick and roof problems. Their home owner's insurance didn't cover everthing, so they used the "gun shot" law suit approach figuring they'd nab someone who would reimburse them.

I was fortunate that my apartment wasn't affected by anything. A few apartments had bowed floors after a heavy rain caused by improper installation of their wood flooring. A few others had their shower walls collapse or the tiles come loose because the contractor used plaster board instead of water proof boards. Another had their circuit breaker set fire since they had a different model, one that had been deemed defective and pulled from the market. Another neighbor found her guest bathroom plumbing wasn't functioning because they hadn't attached anything to the water pipes inside the walls. These problems seemed to occur in the apartments that were the last to be finished before the building opened.