Tradie fears he won’t be able to feed his son after Oracle Homes collapse

The painter is one of 70 staff and 200 suppliers and subcontractors affected, and the completion of 300 half-built homes is now up in the air too.

A tradie fears he won’t be able to feed his son after a construction giant’s collapse left him out of work and out of pocket.
Octavian told 9News that he’s owed $7500 by Oracle Homes, which announced that it had gone into liquidation today.

The painter is one of 70 staff and 200 suppliers and subcontractors out in the cold, and the completion of 300 half-built homes is now up in the air too.

Octavian said he was at work on Wednesday morning when he got a text saying: “Tools down... get off site now.”

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Tradie Octavian fears he won't be able to feed his son after Oracle's collapse. Picture: Nine

The father-of-one now doesn’t know how he’ll get by without getting paid.

“It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be hard. I don’t know. I’m going to have to ask the government, I’m a single father. I have to provide for my son.”

On Wednesday morning, William Cotter and William Robson from Robson Cotter Insolvency Group were appointed as joint liquidators of Queensland residential builder Oracle Building Corporation Pty Ltd.

Oracle Building Corporation trades under a number of names including Oracle Platinum Homes.

Liquidators would not say how much money was owed by the Logan-based builder.

Staff claim they were blindsided when they received a call informing them the construction firm had gone bust while homeowners are now faced with rising build costs to complete their homes.

In a tragic twist, a mother and daughter are among those impacted, after the mum sold an Oracle home to her child to help her buy a house.

Montana and Troy Wilkinson are two impacted homeowners.

Montana Wilkinson, 28, and her husband Troy have forked out $211,000 for a partially completed house while her mum, Boz Thurtell, has been left jobless and owed nearly $50,000 in commission fees from the company.

“They (Oracle) just dragged down everyone’s lives,” Ms Wilkinson told news.com.au.

Ms Wilkinson was looking to buy her first home and ended up using her mother as a sales agent, signing her contract with Oracle Platinum Homes in December 2020.

Although they were warned about delays to her $304,000 house near Ipswich, because of Covid-related supply chain issues, Ms Wilkinson said she started to grow suspicious.

She grew concerned when the builder asked her for an extra $70,000 in variations to the original build and she saw other houses from different building companies be completed in the same period of time.

Even with the delays, the house should have been finished by late last year – but for the last few months, it’s been stuck at the enclosed stage.

In progress payments, the couple have shelled out $211,000 but still have another $90,000 to go.

The building firm appears to have had money troubles for some time, with news.com.au reporting in April that Oracle Platinum Homes had tried to charge customers more for builds, in one case hiking build prices to more than $100,000 than the original agreement.

Montana and Troy have paid $211,000 for their house.

It appears that Oracle’s website and Facebook pages are down as an error code appears.

“The Director … is fully co-operating with the Liquidators with a view to maximising the prospects of recovery for all classes of creditors,” liquidators said in a statement.

It comes as Australia’s building industry is in crisis, with more than a dozen companies going into liquidation so far this year amid rising costs for construction materials and the ongoing supply chain crisis alongside fixed price contracts, putting many out of business.

Queensland has been particularly hit hard, with major building company Gold Coast-based Condev going into liquidation this year.

Earlier this year, two firms from Queensland collapsed just days apart, Pivotal Homes and Solido Builders.

The most recent construction liquidation was another Queensland builder, Besse Construction, that collapsed only last week owing $1.7 million.