Why we built defects.sg

Most renovations don't end badly. They end with a list.

The work finishes, the list of things still to fix is agreed, and the final payment goes out. Then a cabinet door stays crooked and a socket stays loose. No single item is worth a fight, so nobody counts them.

defects.sg is where that list lives.

What it does

• You log each defect with a photo, the room and one line.
• You send the whole list once, sorted by trade.
• Your renovator answers each item, and every fix comes back with a photo.
• You decide whether each fix is done.

"Fixed" can't be recorded without a photo. The app won't accept it. Homeowners never pay to use it.

What it is not: a lead portal

Search for the best renovation firm in Singapore and you will find a lot of help. Ranked lists of top firms. A form offering five free quotes. Leave your name and number, and by evening your phone is ringing.

None of that help is free. You just aren't the one paying for it yet.

A lead portal earns from firms, and what it sells them is you:

• You leave your name, number, budget and move-in date.
• The portal sells that enquiry to several firms. Each one pays for your contact, usually alongside four others who bought the same number.
• On some portals, firms can also pay for a better position, so the "top firms" list you were reading may be sorted by who paid.

The five quotes you asked for are five firms that bought the right to call you.

Question it a little more and it gets uncomfortable. Who decides which firm sits at number one? What did that firm pay for it? And would you know, reading the list, which parts were earned and which were bought? Usually you wouldn't. That is the point.

And the cost doesn't disappear. A firm that pays for every lead, including the many that never sign, recovers that money in the price of the jobs it does win. Firms don't love it either: they pay to compete for a homeowner four others are calling at the same time, and the firm that calls first often has the edge over the firm that builds best.

What we promise

No firm can buy a better grade, at any price. That is the one promise this site makes, and everything else is built around it.

• The formula is published. A firm's grade is worked out from its finished projects: how much of each defect list was fixed, how quickly, and whether the homeowner accepted each fix the first time. Every weight is on How grades work.
• There is no top 10 list. Search finds a firm you name, by its name or its UEN. There is no ranking, so there is no position to buy or climb.
• Your details stay yours. Only the people you add to your own project see them. There is no enquiry form here, and nothing to buy your phone number with.
• Firms pay a flat fee for the projects they run here. Nobody pays for a lead.

Most firms do good work, and the record lets them show it.

A grade is not a five-star review

A grade is not a guarantee of anything. It says nothing about taste, price, or whether you will enjoy working with a firm. defects.sg isn't a regulator or an accreditation scheme either, and being listed isn't an endorsement by anyone.

What a grade does say is something a review can't. You can be happy overall and leave five stars, and still have three defects nobody came back to fix, because you decided you could live with them. The review says "great". The record says three were left open. Only one of those is counted the same way for every firm.

That is why we ask everyone to log every defect, fully, even the small ones you would let go. A record that counts the same way for every firm is fair to the good ones, and it is how a country-wide check and balance on renovation finally gets built: one finished project at a time.

A neutral record protects whoever is telling the truth.

Read next: How a firm's grade works and Before you sign.