Angry tradies vandalise Porter Davis home after Melbourne builder collapses
Angry tradies have been accused of doing the unthinkable to a woman’s home in Melbourne after the collapse of a builder.
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Disgruntled tradies have allegedly vandalised a woman’s home in Melbourne’s southeast following the collapse of builder Porter Davis on Friday.
The new mum told the Herald Sun about $50,000 worth of damage had been done to her Berwick build after sink and bathroom taps were intentionally left running, flooding the property with 7cm of water.
All of the doors and walls were also scratched with a knife. The woman, who did not wish to be named, told the newspaper she believed the damage was caused by subcontractors working on the home.
“I’m completely devastated and shocked,” she said.
“We worked so hard and put a lot of money into this house to only hope we could bring our new baby home this week.
“What they have done has not affected Porter Davis at all but unfortunately only us as now the damages are more than what we had remaining on the house.”
The Melbourne-based home builder was placed into liquidation on Friday, with construction immediately halted on more than 1500 homes in Victoria and a further 200 in Queensland.
Porter Davis, which employs 470 people, joins dozens of Australian building firms to go under in the past 18 months, as soaring costs wipe out razor-thin margins.
Just hours later on Friday another major player in the construction industry, Lloyd Group – which specialises in building schools and other government infrastructure – also collapsed with 59 projects and 200 staff impacted.
“The liquidators will not be trading the PDH Group companies and works on current builds will cease immediately,” Porter Davis liquidators Grant Thornton said in a statement.
“The liquidators are working urgently to determine if a solution can be found to support customers and some employees, including by engaging with key stakeholders and potential interested parties who may be willing to take over the current customer contracts.”
Grant Thornton blamed the “extremely challenging environment for residential home building” for Porter Davis’ collapse, with “rising input costs, supply chain delays, labour shortages, and a drop in demand for new homes in 2023 impacting the group’s liquidity”.
“Notwithstanding the financial support from shareholders and lenders, the group has exhausted options to secure the further funding required to allow Porter Davis to continue to operate viably, and the directors were left with no option but to place the companies into liquidation,” it said.
According to the Herald Sun, a number of under-construction homes with Porter Davis signage were targeted by heartless looters across Melbourne over the weekend, with clients reporting ripped fixtures, shattered windows, smashed cabinetry and stolen furniture.
It comes after another Porter Davis customer shared her distressing story with ABC Radio on Monday morning.
Speaking to ABC 774 Melbourne host Ali Moore, the woman named Kayla revealed that she and her husband had paid more than $800,000 for their home, which was just four weeks away from completion.
“We’re supposed to be moving in on April 30 and then all of a sudden my husband and I read it in the paper at 9.30am on Friday morning … complete shock,” she said.
“The worry and stress since Friday – we’ve been going to the site three, four times a day, making sure that no one’s going on site, no one’s trying to get in, because we’ve been reading in the papers that people have been breaking in and stealing stuff. We’re just so worried. We can’t even get in because the house is locked.
“We were told that we can’t get keys, we were told that we can’t enter on site, and so we go there just watching a house that’s just sitting there.”
Kayla said she and other customers had been left with many unanswered questions, which she hopes will be answered by the liquidators during an online forum at 10am on Tuesday.
“Who’s responsible for our site, who’s going to look after our site now? We have an almost complete house, what if somebody breaks in? Who’s responsible for that? And we’ve been just left up in the air,” she said.
“We don’t know whether it’s insured, we don’t know who’s responsible if something happens to it. And when you’ve handed out more than $800,000, it’s like we’re vulnerable. What’s going to happen?”
Kayla said the home was under insurance with Porter Davis but customers had now been told to apply to the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority – but she had read that the average claim could take up to three years.
“We’ve been with Porter Davis for two years waiting for our home to be built,” she said.
“We’ve been with them through lockdown, waiting [through] a five-month delay for timber last year for the frame.
“We’ve been very patient. We’ve been renting for two years, we’ve got a mortgage, now interest rates are going up. We’re paying a mortgage for a house we don’t have or we don’t know what’s going to happen to.”
She added, “This house was meant to be our forever home, we poured all of our savings into it and now we don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Meanwhile, another unlucky couple told news.com.au on Monday they had been caught up in the Porter Davis collapse just a few months after their previous builder, Snowdon Developments, also went into liquidation.
Ben Kucenko, 37 and his fiancee Steph, 33, signed a contract in July last year with Porter Davis to build their $320,000 home in Thornhill Park.
The vacant lot was originally purchased as part of a house-and-land package through Snowdon Developments in October 2020.
“Who can you trust to build your house?” Mr Kucenko said. “We can’t believe this has happened again.”
– With Alex Turner-Cohen
Originally published as Angry tradies vandalise Porter Davis home after Melbourne builder collapses
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