|
Tarion Warranty Corp., the regulator of the province's home-building industry, on Wednesday named the winners of its annual awards of excellence. Top honours went to Great Gulf Homes and Tribute Communities of Toronto, Rinaldi Homes of St. Catharines, as well as Waterloo-area builder Krepstakies Custom Home Building. "The Tarion Awards of Excellence recognize builders from across Ontario who are leaders in making the new home buying experience the very best it can be," said Tarion president Greg Gee. Tarion's awards focus on customer service performance in four key categories: high-rise builder of the year, and large volume, medium volume, and small volume builder of the year. "We have seen considerable improvement over the last few years in terms of customer satisfaction, as builders aim to stay ahead of rising consumer expectations," said Mr.
Yadkinville police began an investigation yesterday into at least six claims from Hispanic families living in a mobile-home park who say they bought homes and have not received the titles for them. Chief Tim Parks said he met with a group of about 30 families Thursday night to discuss the contentions. Most of the families, including many who do not speak English, just needed guidance on how to go about getting a title transferred to their names. The owner of the mobile-home park, Bob Snyder, sold homes to the majority of its residents. He has maintained that all the families have titles but that some did not complete paperwork to transfer ownership to their names. But police say that may not be entirely true. "There were a few claims that seemed suspicious, so we're going to check into them further.
Despite a lack of communication from Intel, local whitebox builders are generally excited by a $1 million bounty the chipmaker has put on the design of a small and stylish media centre PC. Announced at this week's Intel Developer Forum in the US, the worldwide competition is looking for somebody to build a model that looks at home in the lounge. It must be based on Intel's Viiv technology and Core 2 Duo processor. "We talk to Intel every couple of days but haven't heard anything yet," Plus Corporation managing director, Nigel Fernandes, said. "We'd be keen to give it a go if we're included." Fernandes said Viiv had been a quiet technology to date but predicted the competition might enliven the market. Westan executive director, Kamil Aghtan, and Altech national sales manager, Kevin Hartin, told similar stories.
Three El Paso home builders-remodelers have been fined by the Texas Residential Construction Commission for fraud and deceit, the agency reported last week. Habitat International Inc., was fined $7,000 and given a one-year probated suspension. Las Palmas Phase III Joint Venture was fined $1,000 and given a one-year probated suspension. Homero Perez is the primary agent for both companies, the agency reported. Elite Star Homes Inc., was fined $1,500. .
Contractor General Greg Christie has come under fire for his stance in the Sandals Whitehouse matter. In particular, a complaint he made that many public sector bodies flout government procurement guidelines and more still simply ignore requests made by the Office of the Contractor General for information that might reveal same. Amazingly, there are few, if any, sanctions and where they do exist, such measures are inconsequential. It's time our politicians move beyond setting up understaffed organisations with few resources and little actual power to fight the corruption they claim they so desperately want to get rid of. It's time they move beyond platitudes. - Archibald Gordon, skilarchie@hotmail.com. Christie's stance Contractor General Greg Christie told the Public Accounts Committee that he did not need to ask twice for information.
|
