WA family left with ‘shell of a house’ and $300k loss after Home Innovation Builders collapses

A WA family of six now reside in a shed because they are facing financial ruin after the company meant to be building their home collapsed.

A Western Australian family have been left destitute after the construction company meant to be making their dream house went into liquidation.

Tiarna Nouwland and her husband, in their mid-30s, are wondering how they are going to keep a roof over the heads of their four daughters, aged 16, 11, eight and five respectively.

They shelled out a total of $509,000 to buy land and build a sprawling home on a plot of land at Gabbadah, near Guilderton, north of Perth, but this week their plans came crumbling down.

The building company they were with, Home Innovation Builders, lodged documents with the financial watchdog ASIC on Friday which showed the company had been placed into the hands of liquidators, GTS Advisory.

The Perth-based firm joins a growing list of construction companies to bite the dust in recent months as soaring material and labour costs are exacerbated by Covid-19 delays, eating into builders’ profits and leaving them unable to complete their jobs.

“We’d always wanted to build our dream home, then we found the perfect block and signed the contracts,” Ms Nouwland told news.com.au.

“Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. Financially we are facing being ruined.”

The family stand to lose $300,000 and have been left with “just a shell of a house” with brick walls but nothing else on the barren property.

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The family say they are financially ruined because their building company went bust.

Only a ‘shell of a house’ has been built so far.

The Nouwlands were looking for a tree change and purchased a $180,000 hectare plot of land at the beginning of last year.

They spent an additional $50,000 on land clearing as well as $70,000 for a shed with running water, where the family planned to stay temporarily until the building works finished.

They then signed a contract with Home Innovation Builders to construct a “typical acreage house”, with five bedrooms, two bathrooms, an activity room, a study, a theatre, a kitchen and a scullery.

The entire project was supposed to cost them $410,000, of which they have already given $209,212 in progress payments.

But the rising cost of building materials means that it will now cost way more to complete.

Ms Nouwland got several other quotes for the home and the lowest figure was $570,000 to finish the house "which is more than the original cost,” she pointed out.

Western Australia has one of the lowest thresholds for building insurance in the country, with the current WA regulated QBE Builders Indemnity insurance capped at $99,500.

"After what’s left to draw on our progress payments plus the $99,500 max insurance payout we are facing an additional $300,000 on top of that to finish the house," she explained. 

“There’s no way we can come up with” that kind of money, according to the mum.

“We’re going to be nearly $300,000 out of pocket,” she added, saying this made the family “absolutely crushed”.

If the Nouwlands can’t cover the cost of finishing their home themselves, they will have to sell it at a loss.

They spent $50,000 clearing the shrubbery off the land.

Only the brick work has been done.

They have four daughters they have to provide for.

Ms and Mr Nouwland, aged 33 and 37 respectively.

They are now living in the shed on the property permanently.

“There’s no individual rooms [in the shed],” Ms Nouwland said. “We’ve got a sectioned off area for the toilet.

“The rest of it is completely open, the kids are sharing beds, very little privacy.

“My 8-year-old daughter who is autistic is struggling not having her own space.”

She is unsure how they will fare in the shed when winter comes.

They use an electric frying pan and an air fryer to cook their meals as there isn’t a proper kitchen installed.

The shed was intended as a temporary place to stay and the council only signed a permit for them to stay there for 12 months.

That means when the permit runs out in October, they are facing homelessness.

Ms Nouwland’s mother has passed away and her husband’s parents don’t have room for all six of them to move in.

“Are we going to have a roof over our kids’ heads [in a few months’ time]?” she implored.

The shed where they’ve been living for the last six months.

They are facing losses of $300,000.

Although Home Innovation Builders announced it was going into liquidation on Friday, Ms Nouwland knew for some time that things were seriously wrong.

“Once we got our building permit in July last year it started to move quite quickly, we got bricks delivered,” she said.

“But when the bricks were done that’s when things completely stopped.”

What followed was months of strange occurrences that culminated in a phone call informing her of her worst fears – the construction company was going bust.

Ms Nouwland with two of her daughters.

“We were told they couldn’t access timber until March, that raised a few flags,” Ms Nouwland said, explaining when she looked it up she could find companies delivering timber for a January arrival.

“Around January they started saying they weren’t going to bring in people for particular trades, they were going to do it themselves.”

When the timber did eventually arrive, it was swiftly taken away, with the timber company saying they had never received payment.

In March, she got the call she had been dreading.

“They were going under. They wanted us to cancel the contact, if we’d done that we wouldn’t be eligible for insurance.”

A rendering of what their house would have looked like, had it been built.

Ms Nouwland has created a petition calling on the WA Government to update the Builders Indemnity insurance policy to better protect homeowners like herself.

Another Western Australian company – New Sensation Homes – was placed in the hands of WA Insolvency Solutions the same day as Home Innovation Builders.

Gold Coast firm Condev, Brisbane-based Probuild, and Hobart’s Hotondo Homes are among the other companies to collapse in 2022 as thousands of Australians find themselves in limbo and unsure when they will ever be able to move into their dream homes.

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