I agree that circa 50% of each and all of your points are true, Bunn, and they are unfortunate problems in the current market, some fixable, some not. But generally speaking, the people in the industry usually retain a sense of decorum whilst playing the game; be they rascals, rip off merchants, incompetents or honest injuns. If they conducted themselves such as some do on this forum/thread, then physical violence would result. My point being that it's just as easy to deal with a rogue or rascal via gentlemanly debate and disputation of trade research without calling people names or playing the man instead of the data or idea, no matter how ridiculous or misguided their post is - or is no
That aside, are you aware that most of the Victorian builders going belly-up stem from their legal inability to include price variation clauses in their home building contracts, so have been caught up in the materials inflating/supply chain situation, including rising labour costs. That is not the case in NSW where price variation clauses are legal and standard (without research I'm unsure as to that law in other States).
In the same vein, I was taking to an old builder friend in Melbourne the other day. He's a 'high-end'/'high quality' residential builder - if its less than a $10 million house to build, then he's not your man. In any case, during the course of the conversation he described to me how he was able to survive in the current climate; absent the ability to use variation clauses, was to load the quote substantially in order to defray any rise in costs between start and completion. A dynamic, so he told me, that was only possible when dealing with high-end clients.
