Reliable Constructors in Natal?

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growler

New Member
Does anyone know of a half decent constructor in the Natal area who could handle a medium sized development? I realise that putting the word ¨reliable¨in the title might be limiting my options somewhat but i´m hoping someone might have some useful knowledge or experience.

Thanks
 
G

growler

New Member
Hi Robh, not sure but I would think probably just the construction company. We already have plans etc, just need the building to be done.
 
debzor

debzor

New Member
Does anyone know of a half decent constructor in the Natal area who could handle a medium sized development? I realise that putting the word ¨reliable¨in the title might be limiting my options somewhat but i´m hoping someone might have some useful knowledge or experience.

Thanks
Hey, Growler, what an excellent question and one that I am sure will interest many investors. Not because you raise the issue of reliability (usually non-existent in the South Mediterranean, South and Central America),but because I am sure there are many people out there who have bought land (large or small) with a plan to build at some point in the future. Perhaps they have even been told the local town hall has granted approval?

How do they go about this? Surely this could be the subject of a new sticky thread (John - take note),since any assumption that you simply need to employ a local builder is erroneous, and could be a recipe for disaster. Unfortunately my experience is that many agents have sold on this basis in the past.

You cannot buy a 'field', 'lot' or 'plot' get some nice plans drawn up and start building. Well, that's not true - you can, and many Brazilians do this, then worry about the consequences later after they have sold it. For foreigners this is not an option, so how do you achieve this?

Lets start with town or rural land, beach ownership restrictions, escritura publica, land drainage issues, environmental licenses, multiple engineer's reports, unbelievable bureaucracy etc, etc and then start looking for people who can run the project, let alone build it...

Brazil has outstanding investment potential, but only if you learn the rules that you have to play the game by. And those rules are Brazilian, not European or North American... so we all need to learn them.
 
M

MDV

New Member
Hi Growler,
just seen your post, in my experience there are very few reliable building contractors in the natal area, the main point you must remember is never pay in advance of the planned work program, they all want 50% up front if it is a small one man band type builder, larger 'companies' will have official looking contracts drwan up with staged payments in line with progress of the work, these do not work either, as they always get their plan wrong and never keep up to schedule, which results in the usual " we need more money to pay the workers as this is taking longer than we planned" even with specific clauses in the contract stating that the payments will only by the chronogram, they never do it and then threaten to stop work if you don't pay more than the agreed staged payments, I am speaking from personal experience, there are two companies who I would advise all to avoid for the reasons stated above, these are one from Natal called Misula Construction and another from Pipa called Pipa Pools, the latter being run and owned by a German, which may lead you to think it would be at least efficient, but the truth is the guy is totally incompetent and has no idea what he is doing and employes whoever will work for him regardless of their skills or in the majority of cases lack of skill.
The only way you have a chance is if you are going to be here personally to oversee every single days work, this is sad but true, trust none of them, if you cannot be here then my advice is forget it, you will save yourself a whole lot of grief and a substantial amount of money.
 
G

growler

New Member
Hi MDV thanks for your comments and you are right about the problems with construction. I built 2 houses in the NE a short time back, right next to where I live but still had problems. On 2 or 3 occasions I came home from a trip into the city only to find the workers were starting to do something which was contrary to what we had agreed. Had I been elsewhere and visited a week or so later, it would have been very difficult to put things right without further expense.

The big problem (in the NE anyway) is that they simply do not listen. In our case we had a few instances where we had agreed something then the builder wanted to do something completely different because ¨it would be better¨when in fact what he really meant was ¨I can do it cheaper and save some money¨.

Anyway, I/we do need to find a good constructor to finish a project near Natal. We are talking to one now but as is always the case here, it is slooooow going.
 
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