In Ontario, the province’s homeowner warranty program is called Tarion. Tarion’s key responsibilities revolve around facilitating the fair resolution of disputes between homeowners and builders over warranty coverage, repairs, or customer service, and accessing warranty claims to determine if they are valid. When a builder fails to address a valid warranty claim, Tarion resolves the claim directly with the homeowner, either through compensation or repairs by a third party. Now, all of these responsibilities sound great, but sounding great does not make up for the Tarion shortcomings I had to deal with as a first-time homeowner and before significant changes were introduced.
Becoming a first-time homeowner
In 2017, I became a first-time homeowner. That process required me to carry out a pre-delivery inspection (PDI) of the unit and identify any outstanding deficiencies that the builder needed to address before I took possession of the unit. These flaws ranged from poor workmanship with caulking and painting to floating hardwood floors. When I submitted the PDI to the builder’s sales representative, we both signed and dated the document, and I was scheduled to take ownership of the unit in a few months.
At the time of my purchase, I had intended to move into the unit upon taking ownership, but I would ultimately decide against doing so and chose to rent it out so that I could save up and reduce my mortgage payments. To say that I was lucky with my first pair of tenants would be an understatement, a pilot and a Canada Border Security Agency (CBSA) agent, but their professions would end up inconveniencing the builder with the repair work that needed to get done.
Prior to the re-leveling of the floors, the builder had brought in a local flooring company to assess the job and to create a work plan. Normally, that would be a non-issue, but what complicated the situation were my tenants’ careers and the fact that we had no idea who would have access to the unit.
One of my tenants, the CBSA agent, had a firearm, while my other tenant, the pilot, had flight schedules and other documents that were highly confidential. In their lines of work, there is no room for “mistakes” or “accidents”, so every precaution needed to be taken. I knew this. My tenants knew this. And the builder definitely knew this. So, the fact that my tenants and I asked for information regarding liability insurance and other details about the multi-day repair job should not have been interpreted as something sinister by the builder’s repair manager, but it was, and it resulted in the repairs getting delayed. What should have been a relatively simple repair process dragged out into something much more complicated.
The builder’s repair manager had avoided providing us with answers about the insurance and workmen, and he became even more indirect with his responses over the next few weeks. It was around this time that I found out that our one-year warranty mark for certain repairs identified on the PDI had passed, but the builder’s repair manager had committed to completing the repairs, even beyond the warranty period. So, the deadline passing should have been a non-issue, but it turned out to be anything but.
The builder’s repair manager changed his tone shortly after the one-year warranty had passed, refusing to acknowledge any questions. Initially, the builder was going to cover any costs that I incurred for food and hotel accommodations for my tenants since the repairs required a multi-day absence, but that changed and they refused to cover those costs, referencing Tarion policy to insist that the repairs for the floating floor were no longer necessary.
The language of Tarion’s policies only required the builder to cover the costs for owners that resided in their units, not for an owner’s tenants. What that meant was that Tarion was telling homeowners how they had to use their own home, as non-rentable if they wanted to be covered under the province’s homeowner warranty program, and it took away the onus of responsibility from the builder to provide quality workmanship in tenant-occupied situations. While I believe costs incurred by a homeowner are costs incurred, regardless of if the home was owner-occupied or tenant-occupied, Tarion did not see it that way.
I called Tarion to discuss the matter of outstanding repairs, and was initially told by their representative that the Tarion one-year warranty was a hard deadline, and that whatever I had been provided in writing was irrelevant. It was one of the most idiotic things I had heard in a long time, that a builder could inform a homeowner that they would follow through with specific repairs even after the deadline passed, only for them to renege and for none of their words to matter. I began grilling the call centre representative to the point that her explanations were not adding up, and she had to schedule a call with the executive team. Although I was able to catch Tarion’s representative in a flat-out lie, many other homeowners have not been as lucky and have given up after receiving misinformation from Tarion’s call centre representatives, something later confirmed by the Ontario’s Auditor General report.
From then, there would be month-long hold ups and delays with my interactions with Tarion which they attributed to the time it took for builders to get back to them, approximately ten business days. At one point, Tarion’s builder relations manager tried to refer to Tarion’s policies in an attempt to close my file and my claim, but I stuck firm to the builder’s commitment to completing the repairs even if the one-year warranty had passed and I prevailed.
Tarion comes to town.
In 2018, Tarion had decided to organize city visits across Ontario because the home warranty program was viewed so poorly among Ontarians, but that tour did little to mend the problems homeowners had with the home warranty provider. When I went to the Tarion homeowner’s meeting in Ottawa, I happened to bump into Howard Bogach, Tarion’s CEO, upon entering the building.
Someone from Tarion was doing a “fun” quizzing game about Tarion policies and members of Tarion’s executive team were participating. Those of us at the registration table were invited to participate too. There was a total of three questions asked, I got all three of them right, blurting the answer out before the questions could even be finished. Howard turned to me and said that I knew Tarion policies better than he did. These playful remarks would foreshadow just how much trouble homeowners were in with Tarion, and that fun side would disappear altogether once I started grilling leadership during the question and answer period.
My first question had to do with written commitments that were made by a builder to complete repairs that were required to be done before Tarion’s deadline, but where the deadline would pass without the repairs being completed. How could it be that commitments made in writing to complete outstanding repairs even after Tarion’s deadline passed were meaningless to Tarion? Tarion’s CEO was stumped by the question and struggled to answer it.
My second was about Tarion’s policy that refused to cover homeowners that purchased new homes and who ended up renting them out, but where the builders flaws would not cover the costs incurred by the homeowner for having to accommodate their tenants. Why was it that a homeowner was expected to incur costs that were associated with the accommodations in tenant-occupied situations when they were the result of negligent workmanship? What was the major distinction between owner-occupied and tenant-occupied, and why did it matter who occupied the home? Once again, Tarion’s CEO struggled to answer the question, but this time he responded by saying, “That is a personal matter. It is important that our deadlines are followed if homeowners want to be covered under our homeowner protection policy. Now let’s move on to the next person.” Say what!?
In the real world, a builder that commits to carrying out repairs that they are legally obligated to do because they have been recognized as deficiencies would be considered a binding agreement and it should be considered an extension of the pre-existing terms set out by Tarion. Yet despite us living in the real world, little was real about Tarion.
It seemed Tarion’s policies were disregarding a homeowners’ right to warranty protection in the case of tenant-occupied situation. It was a massive failure. Whoever the people were that were involved in the writing of the policies, and those who would later carry out subsequent revisions, seemed to lack the wherewithal to do so.