All sorts of businesses have trouble in times like this. My understanding is that Signature Homes have done a great job over these years of the recession by completing homes in areas where it was needed, thats more than you would get from most businesses or builders.

This is a little bit hard. We are in the middle of the largest recessions and the home building industry has taken the biggest hit. Signature Homes has stepped up and is going to finish this ladies house. It seems a bit unfair to paint the whole organisation because they have had a couple of their Franchises fall over during this recessionary period. All the major brands have also had franchises fall over and many of the independents have also suffered and closed down.

The Dunedin franchisee before CBC (Murwil Construction) built my house in Invercargill. There were problems that were never resolved after numerous phone calls to a variety of trades people, the franchise holder, builder and Masterbuild guarantee. The director Murray Wilson and master franchisee director Gavin Hunt were of no help whatsoever, in fact quite the opposite. I fully agree that Masterbuild guarantee is a worthless piece of paper, so don't buy one. You will only be 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars out of pocket and have to fix the problems yourself before getting a CCC. Don't go with Signature is my recommendation.

There is no accountability held by the franchise owner at all. They decide who can buy the franchise - and most often they will sell to people with no experience at building houses.

They provide the business model, the marketing program (that the franchises fund)and the buying frameworks. The franchise holder takes 3% of every job, plus they arrange all of the material pricing rates through the merchants, and receive a percentage of this also.

The money is in being the head franchise owner but they organise it so that the liability is all held by the franchisee, and they seem to have no qualms about taking on people with little or no experience to run their franchise branches, sell homes to the public who have misguided faith in the brand of the company, and then walk away when it all tips over.

If you are building your best bet is a local builder with a good reputation. They have the lowest overheads and the greatest accountability.

I have just managed to get my house 98% finished with said Signature Homes/Cunningham Builders. I had nothing but poor excuses and am to date left with no code of compliance, unfinished work, and un rectifiable problems left by poor management. The so called Guarentee isn't worth the paper its written on and head office were of no help even though we kept e mailing them with our concerns over Cunninghams. I think some one needs to get everyone together and coordinate action against Signature to try and help people who are worse of than me. I have proof of lies and deciet by Cunninghams. Its not just the home builder but the contractors must be out of pocket as well. There must be strength in numbers

Signature Homes needs to be held accountable for their franchisees operations. They may offer a guarantee of completion to the home owners but this is of no comfort to the trades people. We are a small business that have been on the receiving end of a large financial loss which very nearly put us out of business when the Manawatu Franchise went bust. There was no financial guarantee or compensation for any of the trades who worked on their projects in this region. I have to question if they should be operating at all with the history of the failed franchise operations Signature Homes is clocking up!

Well, I pity the poor people caught in this situation once again and I would bet that they were or are "Master Builder's" The Master builder gaurantee is not worth the paper it is written on . They are all Rat Bags these fly by night builders, the first thing the directors do is go out and buy a fancy double cab or fancy car with their clients money .We had our new home build buy a Major Building Franchise and they are master builders and I can tell you from experience it was the most stressful months of our lives , 14 months to build a one level 320 m3 home !!! after 4 years we still have issues that will never be resolved .

i before e except after c. Do you have a spell checker Mr. [or Mrs] Journalist?

I dont know of many business that deliberately go out to become insolvent. I do know that when South Canterbury Finance was going bust this Government stepped in and paid out the investors, most of whom have more money that you or I will see in a lifetime, but not only did they pay out in full they also paid the interest of 14%. Who says there is a level playing field? The building industry is almost always the first to bear the brunt of any recession. If the Government had taken the same apporoach to them or home owners as they did to SCF may be building firms up and down the country would not be insolvent today and potential home owners would be in their new homes.

The sad fact is the builder has not go into liquidation personally. It would have been a limited liabilty company. He is not liable to pay damages, and will be back running another limited liability company in a matter of weeks. They have taken this ladies money and ran very well knowing the company would be placed into liquidation. Yet the law is there to protect the company owner as opposed to the customers left with nothing! sad but that is the reality