People choose a large builder because they assume size means financial stability. From inside the industry, I can tell you that size brings risks of its own. This is what they are, and it is also how to check any builder before you sign, including us.
Why builders fail
Building is a cash flow business. A builder signs a contract with you, pays the trades and the suppliers as the work goes in, and lives on the margin between the two. In this industry that margin is thin, and there is not a lot of room when something moves.
Look at what happened to the builders who went into administration after Covid. They had tendered fixed price contracts, often a year or more before the slab was poured. Then the cost of frames, bricks and labour rose by more than their entire margin, and on a fixed price contract there is nowhere for that to go except out of the builder’s own pocket.
The same thing is happening again now, for the opposite reason. The market has tightened, enquiries have slowed, and the builders who need a constant flow of new contracts to pay for the ones already under way are finding that flow drying up. Costs are still rising while the work that funds them is not. That is the squeeze, and it lands hardest on the businesses with the most contracts to feed.
Why size multiplies the risk rather than reducing it
Here is the arithmetic that matters. If I have three homes under way and one goes badly, I can wear it and move on to the next. A builder with eight hundred contracts signed at yesterday’s prices cannot wear eight hundred of them. The same cost movement that hurts a small builder a little takes a large one down, because it compounds across every job they have.
There is also a belief that the big names are backed by overseas parents who will keep pumping money in. I do not agree with it. Those parents want a return on their money. If a subsidiary keeps losing it, at some point they shut it down, and the people left holding half-built homes are the clients.
Then there is the question of who is actually running your job. A volume builder’s supervisor is looking after fifteen or more sites at any one time. That is how they keep the price down, and it works for a lot of people. It is also why a problem on your block can wait a week to be noticed.
Good trades and good builders still have work. Speaking in September 2026, I do not think all of the pain has arrived yet.
The trades problem nobody talks about
There is a second risk with size, and it has nothing to do with money. Since Covid the trades have been leaving the industry faster than they are being replaced, and the teams that are left are smaller. A bricklaying crew that used to run twelve people might now run five. Finding trade companies that can service hundreds of homes a year has become very difficult, because those companies barely exist any more.
A volume builder needs that kind of capacity on every trade, every week, or the program slips. When a supplier cannot keep up, the job waits, and the client is told it is the weather.
A smaller builder’s needs are lighter. I am asking my bricklayer for one house this month, not forty, so he can say yes and mean it. I have worked with the same trades for years, I know what they can carry, and I can plan the work around them instead of hoping a crew they have never used fills the gap. It is not the kind of advantage that shows up in a display centre, but on a tight site in a tight market it is the one that decides whether your house is finished on time.
What a small builder’s size actually buys you
It buys you the trades. The reason you engage a builder is that the trades on your job are people I have worked with for years, who have a reputation to keep with me, and because I know what to look for in their work. I add a margin for that service, and it is the service you are actually paying for.
It also buys you one person. I am the person you deal with from the first call to the final handover, and I am on site when decisions need eyes on them. We take on a limited number of projects each year so that stays true.
It also buys you a contract written by someone who has lived through the last five years. After Covid I changed how we handle timeframes and cost movements, because nobody had ever had a situation where timber simply was not available for six months. You get the HIA contract, a fixed price where the plans are documented, and the statutory warranties and insurance that come with building legally in New South Wales. None of that is special. It is the baseline, and it is worth checking that your builder meets it.
How to check any builder, including us
This is the list I gave on a podcast in 2023 and it has not changed. Do all of it, and do it before you fall in love with a display home.
- Look up the licence. The NSW Fair Trading licence check is public and takes a minute. It shows whether the licence is current, whether any warnings have been issued, and whether the builder is covered for home warranty insurance. Search ours, 263394C. Whatever you find on that page is more reliable than anything a builder says about himself.
- Ask for the Home Building Compensation Fund certificate before you pay a deposit. It is required by law on residential work over $20,000, and it is what protects you if the builder cannot finish. A builder who wants money before producing it has told you something.
- Read the reviews. Google reviews are public, recent and hard to fake in volume. Read the bad ones as carefully as the good ones.
- Look at their social media. Every builder posts their work now. If one is not, I want to know why. A feed going back years shows you what they actually build, not what they photographed once.
- Find the director. The About page of a builder’s website should tell you who runs the company. If the director is hiding, that is a concern, and for a small builder it is a serious one. Ours is here.
- Ask for referrals. Not the testimonials on the website. Someone who built with them, that you can ring.
- Build local. Builders are strongest where their trade base is and where they know the councils. We work across the Hills and the North Shore for that reason, and I would be wary of any builder who says yes to a job two hours from their last one.
- Read the tender. A proper quote comes in a tender format with the inclusions spelt out line by line, not a number on a page. If you cannot see what is in it, you cannot see what is missing.
What to ask instead of “how big are you?”
How many projects do you run at the same time? Who will I actually deal with, and will that person be on my site? Show me your licence and your warranty certificate. What happens under this contract if the price of materials moves during the build? Which of your trades have you used for more than five years? A builder who can answer those five questions without reaching for a brochure is telling you more than any turnover figure could.
Hear it in my own words
The conversation this comes from is on The Mortgage Chat, recorded in July 2023. Why builders fold, from 13:46. Why bigger is not safer, from 24:49. How to check a builder, from 27:25. The September 2026 view on volume builders is from a conversation with Andrew Romano, from 1:22. Nothing since has changed my mind.