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Buying a home? The building commissioner has a message for you
By Max Maddison
Departing Building Commissioner David Chandler believes his successor will be able to “weed out” and rescind the building licences of the state’s riskiest developers but has urged consumers to use the unprecedented powers given to them before purchasing a property.
Having announced he would not renew his contract after five years in the job, Chandler said the industry was improving, and there had been a declining number of serious defects reported in buildings constructed since 2019.
Departing Building Commissioner David Chandler has urged consumers to use new powers granted to them.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Chandler was hired by the former Coalition government to clean up the state’s building industry after a series of serious issues in recently built developments, including the Opal Tower in Sydney Olympic Park and Mascot Towers in the city’s inner south.
Chandler said the next building commissioner would be able to build on his tenure but would face a “very different frontier” than the “real arm-wrestle” he confronted with “the worst players that the industry has seen”.
After telling the Herald in January that up to 20 per cent of property developers in NSW were “risky”, Chandler said the Building Commission was using numerous data inputs to profile developers and detect potential “red flags”.
Over the next “three or so” years the Building Commission would be able to weed out the risky players in the market, including about half of the 20 per cent who Chandler considered “high risk”.
“So that’ll take a couple of years, but we’re now into a serious body of work, identifying who those players are, and every time their licence comes up for renewal they will be challenged to demonstrate that they’re a fit and proper person,” he told the Herald.
Chandler said the intention was for the Building Commission to become the “most proactive and productive regulator” in the building industry in Australia. But the onus was also now on potential home buyers to ensure new tools afforded to them were put to good use.
He urged consumers to exercise the unprecedented powers available to them to sift between the “risky and trustworthy” players, noting banks were now lifting lending standards for developers.
“It’s now about how we do business better. But the final message has got to be for new consumers: you have these new powers, you have the iCIRT build star-rating tools, you have 10-year warranty insurance,” he said.
“You are making the biggest decision of your life, please use the tools that we have created specifically for you. Because there’s nothing we can do if you don’t pay attention to that.”
The 2023 Strata Defects Survey showed the incidence of serious defects in buildings registered fell from 56 per cent in 2019 to just 17 per cent in 2022, albeit with nearly half of those surveyed saying they did not know if there were defects.
Released late last year, the report notes the correlation between the commencement of powers given to the Building Commissioner in 2020 and 2021, and the decline in serious defects being reported.
Despite previously reneging on his resignation in 2022, Chandler said the circumstances surrounding his departure this time were different, as he vowed to the public not to serve on the board of a developer or builder.
“That would be a real breach of my trust with the public,” Chandler said, adding he would continue advising industry and government.
“I’m certainly not retiring. It’s just that I didn’t want to sign up for another two years running a very large organisation at this stage of my life.”
Building Minister Anoulack Chanthivong thanked Chandler for his work, saying he commenced as a “one-man band” but was now supported by a “comprehensive, dedicated team”.
“I don’t think people in NSW have heard the end of David Chandler. I look forward to continuing to work with him,” he said.