Darren’s defect-riddled Sydney home had no roof for six months. Now he’s $600,000 short

Darren Ayres says his three-year ordeal with builder ANSA Homes “nearly destroyed me and my family”.

First, the beams and flooring were exposed for six months before the roof was built, a witness statement prepared for the Building Commission alleged; then three separate building inspections confirmed a litany of defects.

Darren and Donna Ayres with children Summer, Ruby and Dylan at their home in Ryde.Credit: Flavio Brancaleone

“The major defects and subpar workmanship is not what we signed up for,” the Ayres’ statement said. “We paid for a brand-new house up to Australian standards and our house is definitely not that.”

Ayres alleges his home was left with an estimated $800,000 worth of defects before ANSA, a Marsden Park-based company, run by Mark Maloney, had its licence suspended in June last year, collapsing into liquidation two months later.

The state government-run insurance scheme, the Home Building Compensation Fund (HBCF), was designed as a safety net for families such as the Ayres in situations such as theirs.

But the Ayres’ expenses grew quickly – $70,000 in rent paid over the three years since construction began in January 2022, $50,000 in legal fees spent fighting ANSA, then another $50,000 in leveraged finance to keep the lights on. Money from the fund quickly evaporated.

The maximum coverage from the fund of $340,000 hasn’t increased since 2012, when the average cost of building a home was $314,000. The cost of construction increased by 30.2 per cent between 2019-20 and 2023-24 alone.

ANSA Homes boss Mark Maloney has allegedly failed to comply with rectification orders issued by the Building Commission.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald

Licensed contractors who take on residential work worth more than $20,000 need insurance coverage through HBCF. The fund can be accessed once a builder goes bankrupt, loses their licence or disappears. Ayres is just one of ANSA Homes’ clients for whom the payout does not cover costs of repair.

He estimated the cost of repairing his house to be about $800,000. Instead, he’ll have to try to do it with all that remains of his HBCF payout, or about $170,000.

“We’re about $600,000 short. The only way I can save it is by doing it myself,” says Ayres, a builder who will spend at least three months of his time repairing the damage.

Premiums under the scheme can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars depending on the cost of the build, but the maximum payment remains the same, regardless if you’re paying $5000 or $30,000; whether the value of the build is $700,000 or $7 million.

Via lawyers, Maloney said legal proceedings had been pursued against Ayres after he defaulted “on payments due to ANSA”. Work ceased on the property afterwards.

The HBCF is subject to a review, led by consultant Bronwyn Weir, that began in August with the maximum payout one aspect in her sights.

A spokesperson for icare, the agency with carriage for the insurance scheme, noted the HBCF was subject to a review by Weir.

“HBCF is not an enforcement agency, but a provider of insurance that works according to legislation that is overseen by SIRA and the Building Commission NSW, who have responsibility for oversight and compliance of the building industry,” she said.

The HBCF’s inadequacies came as liquidators continued to probe the demise of ANSA Homes.

A second creditors report, issued by insolvency firm Jirsch Sutherland last November and obtained by the Herald, estimated there were 151 creditors owed $6.2 million, with the tax office owed more than $1 million.

The report outlines concerns about missing funds from assets sold in the months leading up to the company’s bankruptcy. Firstly, the creditors’ report raised concerns that ANSA Homes may have been trading while insolvent “from at least” July 4, 2024, finding the company’s assets plunged by $6 million in the financial year to June 30, 2024.

A million-dollar profit posted in the financial year ending June 2022 swiftly became a $4.1 million loss two years later.

Maloney’s lawyers confirm that the report does not accuse Maloney of trading ANSA Homes while insolvent.

Maloney’s lawyers said “the deterioration in trading results in the 2023 financial year resulted from a combination of economic factors”.

Another concern raised in the report was the sale of 10 vehicles over five days from June 25, when the Herald first published a litany of allegations levelled against ANSA and Maloney. Each car was sold considerably below market rate.

Two – a 2017 Mitsubishi Triton valued at up to $20,000 and 2018 Toyota Hiace valued up to $30,000 – were sold to Alicia McEvoy for $4500 and $5600, respectively.

McEvoy (formerly Stephandellis) is the wife of Aaron McEvoy, Maloney’s brother-in-law and owner of Berkeley Homes, the construction company which took on almost all of ANSA Homes’ work after their licence was suspended.

McEvoy was offered multiple opportunities to comment.

Three display homes in Marsden Park were also sold for a total of $3 million in the fortnight before ANSA Homes entered liquidation. Another property in Oran Park was sold for $1.3 million in 2021. The liquidators said the proceeds of the sale could not be found in any of the company’s bank accounts.

Maloney said the net proceeds “were paid into a company’s bank account at the time”.

In the six months before Jirsch Sutherland’s appointment, liquidators identified more than $800,000 across 44 payments sent from ANSA’s bank holdings to related parties they believed could be clawed back to pay creditors. This included $177,459 to an “unknown” Commonwealth account.

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