Homeowners are desperately seeking solutions after new homes in Sydney’s western suburbs have started to sink, with ‘Wild West’ developers being blamed.
New homes in areas such as Glenmore Park and Box Hill in Sydney’s western suburbs are showing cracks in the external and internal walls and floors due to foundation problems, 7 News reported.
The problem has become so serious that New South Wales Building Commissioner David Chandler has launched a new investigation into the cause.
Mr Chandler uses satellite images to see what the farmland on the sites looked like before builders began construction of the estate.
“If you go back and look at the neighborhood as it was when it was a pasture, you can see the holes where there used to be dams and where the ground beneath the slab had collapsed,” he said.
“There are a number of ‘Wild West’ players who thought they could get away with it in the past, but they may not be able to get away with it in the future.”
The commissioner said if a homeowner has to regularly repair cracks and shifts in the floor, “something is not right.”
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said the government was reviewing where homes could be built in the future because of subsidence issues on land prone to flooding.
More homes in several Western Sydney suburbs are showing signs of subsidence, with cracks appearing in walls and floors (pictured)
Homes in the area are thought to be sinking because they are built on flood-prone land and have poor foundations from being built on inadequately compacted landfill (pictured, a driveway with an exposed concrete slab in Jordan Springs East, 2020)
“We have made decisions that have been unpopular, particularly over the last six months with regard to housing,” he said.
Sadly, it’s not a new problem in Sydney’s west. Daily Mail Australia reported on almost identical issues on the Jordan Springs estate in 2020.
At the time, the local council fined 841 homes, worth $605 million, after conducting a report in 2018.
It was soon discovered that the estate had likely been built on a landfill that had not been sufficiently compacted, causing the ground to sink as much as a foot in some places.
One of the sinking houses in Jordan Springs East in Llandilo, near Penrith (pictured)
At the end of January 2024, 18 houses in the neighborhood were prepared for demolition because the damage was considered too great to repair.
Lendlease, the $4 billion company that developed the estate, was forced to launch a compensation program in 2020, buying back 50 homes from people who were ordered to renovate them and put them back on the market or demolish them because they were “uninhabitable.”
Mr Minns urges anyone experiencing subsidence to contact the building commissioner.