Wollongong building blitz catches out apartment complexes with defects

Over the past 12 months, there have been questions raised about the construction quality of a number of new apartment complexes in the city - and across the Illawarra.

These have included a new apartment building that leaks whenever it rains.

Another shut down in November - and still yet to restart work - because of cracking walls and gaps between concrete and load-bearing structures.

At the high end of Crown Street an apartment block sits empty due to a load-bearing column in the basement deemed "structurally inadequate" - leaving owners who bought six years ago still waiting to move in.

Just south of the city, another apartment site has been shut down twice by the NSW Building Commissioner, once because of holes drilled into load-bearing parts of the building.

Over near the train line, a planned nine-storey block never saw shovels hit the dirt because the developer went broke.

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In North Wollongong, construction on an eight-storey development was halted when the builder went into liquidation.

In the suburbs, builders going broke have left people high and dry as their homes sit unfinished.

In Shell Cove, there are streets that feature newly-built houses are covered with scaffolding for months as workers repair a litany of faults.

And all of this has happened in the space of just nine months.

The issues began to be uncovered by the NSW Building Inspector David Chandler in August last year on a snap building inspection - and he didn't like what he saw.

"We are going to have an absolute blitz on the Wollongong area because what we've seen is as bad as we've seen anywhere in NSW," Mr Chandler said.

"We haven't seen it this bad in the Tweed. We haven't seen it this bad in Coffs or Port Macquarie, haven't seen it this bad in Newcastle.

"There are a few pockets of it in Sydney, but it's consistently not good in Wollongong."

One of those that failed to impress was the Wonder Apartments in Young Street, slapping two separate stop work orders on the site in the second half of last year.

The latter dealt with honeycombing and cracking in the walls and concerns about the building's stability.

Since the order in November, the site has sat untouched, weeds growing up through the fencing.

Developer Wonderfield Projects is also in trouble over its Loft Residences in Loftus Street, where water has been leaking into a number of apartments and the roof has no overflow drainage.

People who bought into Crownview Apartments six years ago are still waiting to move in. A delayed entry date of April has been pushed back to November as builders work to rectify faults found by the Building Commissioner.

"Every time we drive past the Crownview me and my partner, either we stick our fingers up or we look away because it's a pit in our guts - we cannot look at it," said Arrielle Richards, who has bought an apartment in the complex.

Central Park in Keira Street was hit with a pair of stop-work orders last year, with the problems rectified and construction underway again.

Work on a planned tower in Gladstone Avenue never even began, after the company behind it, Kingdom Developments began to stumble, leading to bankruptcy.

That is not an uncommon story in the construction industry as companies struggle to deal with the double whammy of high labour costs along with a series of interest rate rises.

Something else that has gone up is the number of building-related complaints NSW Fair Trading has received from the Illawarra.

In the 12 months to June 6, 2023, Fair Trading had received 244 complaints about building and construction work in the Illawarra, up from 214 from the previous year.

NSW Planning Minister and Wollongong MP Paul Scully said he was aware of the need to improve the quality of construction.

"I am working with my colleague the Minister for Fair Trading and the Minister for Building who has responsibility for policy changes to strengthen industry oversight," Mr Scully said.

"The Minns Government will establish the NSW Building Commission to strengthen the sector by building on the work of the building commissioner, and the new Building Act will consolidate and modernise many pieces of legislation, some decades old.

"This work will provide clarity to consumers and the sector about their rights and responsibilities and incentivise the building sector to deliver quality homes."

The crackdown from the building commissioner led to Wollongong City Council conducting its own inspections, finding almost 200 issues of non-compliance.

"While it's disappointing to see so many people do the wrong thing, I think that there's a real opportunity to educate the construction industry, to improve the standards to which they work and to demonstrate to them that council will act if they're not meeting the requirements," said council director of planning and environment Linda Davis.

When it comes to oversight of the construction of an apartment complex, council has no role to play unless it has been appointed as a principal certifier - most developers hire a private certifier, who is responsible for monitoring the process.

"Council has limited certification exposure in the residential apartment building sector since 1998 when the NSW Government introduced private certification," a council spokesman said.

"We continue to undertake certification functions in accordance with our statutory obligations.

Read more: The Illawarra is now in a housing emergency

"The vast majority of Wollongong City Council's principal certifier work is for smaller developments. None of the residential buildings where council is the principal certifier have been issued with stop work or prohibition orders."

Delays caused by sub-standard construction are exacerbating the city's housing crisis, with site shutdowns holding back delivery of new apartments.

According to Colliers Wollongong managing director Simon Kersten, the five-year apartment delivery timeline has lost as many as 1519 apartments compared to the same time last year.

"There are lots of reasons for that," Mr Kersten said.

"Some of it being problems with funding, some of them developers are pushing things out because of the increase in construction costs.

"Some of them being the building commissioner coming to Wollongong and locking a couple of buildings up."

However, he said sites locked up by the commissioner only accounted for around 200 of the 1500 apartments.

What was having a greater effect on the apartment shortfall was high construction costs and purchase prices.

With the former higher than the latter developers are delaying projects because they don't make sense financially.

Despite problems with some apartment complexes under construction Mr Kersten said that hadn't seen people scared away from buying off the plan rather than waiting to see the building completed.

He said there were around 500 apartments set for completion over the next two years and half of them have already been bought off the plan.

"In Wollongong you have no choice at the moment because there's nothing on the ground that's available," Mr Kersten said.

In terms of the problem builds caught by the Building Commissioner, Mr Kersten felt buyers shouldn't be concerned.

"I think in some respects it's a positive in that the consumer understands that there's a check and a balance in place and those that arena't behaving are dealt with," he said.

"It should instil confidence in the consumer."

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