Get to Know Your New Home Warranty
By on Aug 13, 2013
If you’re thinking about buying a new home, you’ll soon be introduced to a whole new vocabulary – agreements of purchase and sale, addendums, and Tarion. If you aren’t already familiar with Tarion, you’ll want to be. Tarion is the regulator of new home builders in Ontario and also administers the statutory warranty program that builders are required to provide to every new home buyer. This means that when you buy a new home in Ontario, it has been built by a licensed builder who has successfully completed technical, financial and business competency analyses.
It also means that if something does go wrong along the way, Tarion is there to help. Tarion was formed in 1976 to provide greater consumer protection, increased accountability for builders and a fair and balanced forum for homeowners to have concerns about their new homes resolved.
Tarion protection starts before a builder even breaks ground. The warranty protection lasts for seven years from the time the new home is completed and ready for possession. Although it is described as one warranty for simplicity’s sake, in reality, just about all new homes in Ontario come with deposit and delayed closing protection in addition to three separate warranties that provide different types of coverage at different points in the life cycle of a home. These are the one, two and seven year warranties.
Buyers of resale homes that are less than seven years old also benefit from Tarion backed warranty coverage. The warranty stays with the home and is valid for seven years from the original date of possession, regardless of who owns the home.
In addition to licensing new home builders and resolving disputes about warranty coverage, Tarion works to educate new home buyers about their warranty rights, ensures builders/vendors abide by the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act, protects consumers when builders fail to fulfill their warranty obligations, investigates illegal building practices, and promotes high standards of new home construction.
For more information about Tarion and warranty coverage, visit www.tarion.com.
