Australia’s home-building sector, bound by fixed-price contracts that pushed companies to the wall and triggered sunset clauses requiring customers to pay more, is emerging from the time of white-hot inflation that has pushed the cost of building a house up 33 per cent since the pandemic started.

As figures showed house building costs picked up just 0.6 per cent in the June quarter, a home-building industry veteran defended the use of the fixed price contracts that have pushed many builders into insolvency and said banks were unlikely to change the model that contained their risk.