Metricon offers proposal to help finish Porter Davis homes

Hundreds of homes left unfinished by collapsed builder Porter Davis may be completed by Metricon Homes under a new proposal.

Hundreds of homes left unfinished by the collapse of Porter Davis could be completed by Metricon Homes under a new plan to help them move into their properties.

The major home builder announced on Thursday that it had put forward a proposal to the Victorian Managed Insurance Authority to assist in almost 500 unfinished builds.

This could see them take over the construction of the homes in an effort to get them moved inside as quickly as possible.

The plan is still waiting for final approval from the VMIA but Metricon believes they are close to finalising the arrangement, which would provide affected Porter Davis customers the option of taking up Metricon’s offer.

Brad Duggan, who will soon become Metricon’s chief executive, said the company viewed the collapse of Porter Davis as a problem for the industry and wanted to fix it.

Metricon is hoping to offer a lifeline to Porter Davis customers. Picture: David Caird

“As Australia’s largest residential builder, we have been working with the VMIA to generate a large-scale industry solution,” he said.

“We are confident that we have a strong plan to deliver homes for ex-Porter Davis customers without impacting our existing Metricon customers.

“We are also pleased that the VMIA has great confidence in Metricon’s financial position and operational capacity following a detailed review process.

“Ex-Porter Davis customers should take great comfort in the diligence that VMIA is undertaking to creating solutions for the completion of their homes.”

The move is a vote of confidence in Metricon just a year after it held crisis talks with the Andrews government over industry cost pressures that had pushed major builders to the brink of collapse.

In May last year, owners injected $30m of capital into the company to show their faith in its future, which had been under a cloud since the shock death of its founder Mario Biasin.
The home building industry has been under severe strain for the past 18 months, largely due to material and labour shortages and price hikes.
Those issues were blamed for the collapse of Porter Davis, which was building almost 1700 homes around the country when liquidators were called in.

After the Porter Davis collapse the Andrews government said it would cover the deposits of hundreds of families who had not been insured by the builder, and promised to toughen sector laws to better protect consumers.