Show me the money: Crownview buyer wants their deposit back

The northern Illawarra resident had put down a 5 per cent deposit on a $465,000 one-bedroom apartment three years ago, buying it as an investment property.

They had been hanging on despite repeated construction delays due to building defects, but the Mercury revealing that Building Commissioner David Chandler found even more problems during a surprise visit last week was the final straw.

Mr Chandler was in town last week to speak at a business lunch and stopped in at Crownview to check out the bathrooms, which he said hadn't been looked at before.

He found problems with the tiles, as well as inadequate drainage on the balconies and post-tensioning ducts full of water.

The Building Commissioner said as the sunset date - the date set in the contract for completion of the building - had passed buyers were entitled to a refund.

The buyer from the northern Illawarra is one of those people.

"We've totally lost faith now," the buyer said.

"We gave them the benefit of the doubt for three years but now we're going to ask for a refund.

"After three years we've finally come to that conclusion, given how many problems there have been over and over and over. Some of the engineering problems, my husband's an engineer himself and he thinks if they hadn't fixed it by now it may never get fixed."

Another problem is that the buyer said she had been kept in the dark; the buyers receive short letters every time a planned move-in date is missed, but those letters contain very little information on what is actually wrong.

"Every couple of months we get a letter saying they've extended it but there isn't a reason why," they said.

"The biggest frustration is not being provided information from their legal team or the builders. The only information we ever get is from the Mercury."

The buyer still planned to purchase an investment property with their refunded deposit, even though property prices had gone up and the money won't buy what it could three years ago.

"It is disappointing," they said, "but we'd rather pay the extra $100,000 than have problems further down the track. If they've got this many problems now, what are they going to find two, three five years after the building is occupied?"