A few days late to this article , it’s from the Courier Mail but it does appear the QBCC are cracking down on builders finances. The statistic that really surprised me was the number of builders in Queensland that have gone bust since the start of the year. Have a guess…5? 10? 20?… give up? It’s 30+ builders that have gone bust since the start of the year… and potentially a lot of houses, renovations, decks, carports that remain unfinished with homeowners left in the lurch.
I’m not sure where the Courier Mail got this statistic, and I have not verified it. I’m going to assume that they obtained this figure from the QBCC or somehow did some ASIC database sleuthing. I actually do wish there was a way to keep tabs on this and I do wonder if there is a way to know who is on this list of 30+ builders… but that will have to be an article for another day.
Hope fully as a home owner, you’ve only paid up to the amount of work rendered, this doesn’t mean it’s not going to cost you more money, to the contrary, if you find yourself in this predicament, the chances are high that your builder hasn’t paid his subcontractors (including the building certifier) for the work they have done on your house. So the issue you’ll have is that the subcontractors may not be so inclined to help you finish the work if they haven’t been paid themselves.
It’s not the end of the world, but boy is it now going to cost you more time and money to have the house completed by another builder, keep all the subcontractors happy, and chase the required paperwork so that your building certifier is able to finalise the approval process so that you can lawfully occupy your own home. Not a very pleasant experience.
In my experience as a certifier, the biggest pain point is chasing the paperwork from your subcontractors (i.e. Form 16s, Installation Certificates, etc) so that your building certifier can finalise the approval. If you find yourself in this unfortunate situation, your first call should be to the QBCC to see if there are avenues under the home warranty insurance scheme that you paid into at the time the building approval was issued. Your second call should be to the building certifier to ascertain the actual status of the building approval and the required documentation that is still outstanding that your building certifier will need a copy off in order to finalise your building approval.
If you’re building certifier is not willing to assist or either you or your certifier have disengaged themselves from the project, feel free to contact us, no guarantees we will have an easy solution, but we are always happy to steer you in the right direction.
