Builders are paying an extra $5,000 in expenses on a standard four-bedroom home in a new development, she estimated, with many on fixed-price contracts.

"For the volume builders, that per-home amount can make a difference," she told SBS News.

The instant you start talking about poor widdle volume builders you lose me. Landbanking, artificial restriction of supply, subpar builds, how about you straight up fuck off and die.

[–] MisterFrog@aussie.zone 4 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

$5,000 in expenses on a standard four-bedroom home

This seems pretty damn reasonable to ensure that the house is built to a good standard...

Even their cherry picked numbers aren't convincing

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 3 points 4 weeks ago

Extra $5k in expenses on a house they're gonna sell for north of a mill.

Oh. The pain.

[–] Dimand@aussie.zone 11 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

I have no doubt that that code is over complicated and inaccessible and probably needs a full rewrite that actually makes it accessible and effective.

That said, I'm sure there are far too many builders that are looking for the cheap and easy loopholes that certainly contributed to its current state.

Literally yesterday I found a beam in a 2007 apartment build that has been secured to the slab above with framing nails. This should have been done with a proper concrete bolt or anchor. The nails were failing and the whole ceiling was starting to fall.

Honestly. I think the government should design a cookie cutter 3 bed house that is standardised and easy to build, easy to check and certify the build. Buy or hell even make the framing and materials locally in bulk and start pumping out the same house over and over again.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 8 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (1 children)

Hell, they did that last postwar with the ol' concrete slabs at the Holmesglen factory.

(Grew up in one, please do use concrete prefab again i do not recommmend)

But the fact that modern builds are so shite everyone knows it is ridiculous. That's not a "complex code" issue, that's a shonky industry

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 5 points 4 weeks ago

I grew up in a mining town where there were just 5 or 6 different core designs for three and four bedroom houses, and a street was made up of those designs with minor variations like rotating it 90 degrees on the lot or mirroring the design.

If you weren't looking for it, that lack of variety was completely unnoticeable as you drove down the street.