The State Government’s $40 million deal with Nicheliving may eventually resolve the crisis faced by more than 200 WA house customers but it has left more than 40 Nicheliving apartment buyers with nothing, zilch, nada.
How can this be acceptable?
Set aside the justifiable outrage over the State Government’s decision that taxpayers - not Nicheliving directors - should pick up the $40 million tab for Nicheliving taking its customers’ money, not doing the work and leaving hundreds homeless (The West, Kim Macdonald, 11/10/2024, Why was Nicheliving let off the hook without any penalty?)
Then ask yourself, how would you feel if you, like Nicheliving’s other customers, were also without a home, but because your home was an unfinished apartment in a complex that will eventually be four storeys, and not a house, you will not be able to access the $200,000 home indemnity insurance because it is not available to apartment buyers in developments of four storeys or more.
It is a bitter, bitter pill.
And so it is that the buyers of apartments in Nicheliving’s four-storey Sky Homes project at 939 Beaufort Street, Inglewood, find their situation as unresolved as ever. Depending on your source, the development has 58 to 62 apartments, and Nicheliving’s Sky Homes Perth website says 70 per cent of these have been sold.
Started in October 2021 and not expected to be finished until next year, not one of those apartment buyers will get access to the $200,000 home indemnity that now becomes available to Nicheliving’s house customers.
That includes one young 23-year-old female buyer who was choosing these Nicheliving apartments as her first home.
Australian Apartment Advocacy (AAA) has been calling on the State Government to fast-track building reforms, set up a home warranty scheme for residential buildings of four-storeys plus and create clearer and fairer protections for apartment buyers for many years.
We repeated that call directly and explicitly in the opinion pages of The West Australian in January (WA apartment owners shouldn’t be second class citizens, 8/1/2024).
It is not good enough that in WA in 2024 there are limited options for buyers of apartments with finish dates years behind schedule or in projects with suspected structural flaws.
There’s no mechanism for timely, independent intervention to ensure defects are fixed during construction, no compensation for extra rent liability and virtually no exit for buyers who have signed contracts.
The State Government has promised reform from 2026 to monitor whether builders have complied with standards and codes.
But we need protection for apartment buyers and owners now. Apartment buyers need a home insurance fund if the builder or developer goes bust or if the building has structural defects or the delivery of homes is delayed.
Nicheliving is to lose its building registration and Commerce Minister Sue Ellery says she can understand the frustration of those who would like to see Nicheliving directors face financial penalties but that her focus is on getting homes finished.
AAA concurs that we need homes, but more importantly we are calling on the Cook Government to introduce better processes and consumer protection so that apartment owners are on an equal footing with traditional homeowners. This is particularly relevant with the State Government’s target of 47% infill.
Our state is having the worst housing crisis in memory and yet we still have no satisfactory consumer protection mechanism for apartment buyers stranded by builders who do not do what they say they will do and deliver when they say they will deliver.
We need homes for West Australians but even more, we need robust consumer protection for apartment buyers, otherwise it will become a housing option that consumers will not trust.
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