Hallbury Homes builder’s collapse leaves customers in lurch: Terry Condon

Six years after laying the foundation of their dream home, life for an Australian couple has turned into a “nightmare” as the art deco home remains unfinished, $150,000 over-budgeted, and riddled with problems.

Landscape designer Terry Condon hired construction company Hallbury Homes to begin work on the project in 2017, and the house, in the south-east Melbourne suburb of Harkaway, is scheduled for completion in 2020.

There were major problems from the start, and now the couple have no idea if their half-built house will ever be finished.

Hallbury Homes filed for bankruptcy on January 4 due about $7 million to creditors and leaving a string of desperate customers like the Condons in the lurch.

“This was my dream,” Conder told Daily Mail Australia. I designed it with my wife and it has been a nightmare.

“I went out and sat for an hour thinking ‘what am I going to do?'”

‘My wife had a breakdown about a year ago because of it.

“She couldn’t get close to the place, she couldn’t walk past it, she had tremors, she had to take time off work.”

Firm administrator Michael Caspaney of Menzies Advisory said the company had been working on 42 sites with 52 projects when it collapsed and 20 employees were affected.

Cost overruns in 2022 saw a carnage in the construction industry with notable big name players like Probuild, FIRM, Condev Construction, Pivotal Homes, Waterford Homes, New Sensation Homes, Oracle and Privium all going under.

Experts warn the trend will continue into 2023 with runaway inflation and material and labor shortages continuing to plague the industry due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and persistent supply chain failures in the wake of the covid pandemic.

During a 2020 inspection prior to the original delivery of Mr. Conder’s home, he noticed green mold growing on the floor.

He said that within a week he was ‘black and hairy’.

“I told them ‘this is real mold growing everywhere,'” Conder said.

The construction supervisor said it was a wood stain.

“Then we did three inspections that said it was mold.

Reports said the house was riddled with mold. It was absolutely rotten within the walls.

Conder said that at every turn Hallbury bosses hounded him and Andrea for more money or tried to intimidate them into taking shoddy jobs.

His behavior became so intimidating that Conder said he asked his son to accompany him on inspections.

“You’d go there and four or five of them would try to intimidate you into submitting to say ‘this is how it’s going to be,'” Conder said.

At one point, Conder said he was forced to videotape the damage caused by water seeping under the balcony.

He discovered that the builder had put giant heaters under the house to dry it out, while charging the Conders their electric bill for keeping them running 24/7.

However, that was just the beginning of the problems with the house.

“We haven’t been picky about ‘there’s a scratch here’ or this or that,” Conder said.

“We’re talking about important things that have gone wrong.”

The house has not been built to the specified height, he claims, and the 11 brick pillars that support the house do not meet construction standards.

Two bathrooms are also not well equipped and both need to be ripped out.

“There are walls that are crooked, doors that don’t slide properly,” Conder said.

“The workbenches will also need to be ripped out, the LED lights were put in the wrong place, there are wrong and mismatched painted colors everywhere.”

A door that goes under the house that has been replaced nine times.

Conder accused Hallbury of ludicrous attempts to cut costs.

“Instead of replacing the door handles, a supervisor came over with a can of black spray paint and painted all the door handles, all the door frames and all the glass because he didn’t tape them down,” Connor said.

Mr. Conder and his wife have been renting since 2017.

She had expected to move into the new house with her mother-in-law and mother-in-law two and a half years ago.

Now it is unlikely that both elderly parents will be able to make the switch.

“I’ve been sleeping on the floor for five years on a mattress,” Conder said.

All the appliances and furniture they had hoped to put in the new house are piled up in their rental or in storage, and Conder says much of it is now “half broke.”

He places some of the blame on the state building watchdog, which had received his and other complaints against Hallbury but had failed to act.

“There is no one watching the builders in Victoria,” he said.

Another Hallbury customer, Rebecca Schrader, said she in the western Melbourne suburb of Sunbury also had mold problems.

She said the company pressured her for payments despite missing work thresholds, uneven walls, cracks in the plaster and many other issues.

“I had to fight really hard for something I shouldn’t have to fight for because all we ask for is what’s in the contract and the minimum standards, nothing more, nothing less,” Ms Shrader told The Australian.

‘When people come to my house, they tell me that the house appears to be five or six years old due to poor workmanship.’

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Hallbury Homes for comment.