Who we act for

Home owners

Defects, work that was never finished, bills that keep growing, or a builder who has stopped answering. This page sets out what the law gives you and the order to use it in.

General information, not legal advice. This page sets out how the law generally applies. It does not take account of your circumstances, and you should get advice about your own situation before acting on it. The official sources this page is written from are listed on it; where they differ from anything here, they are the authority.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

A building problem is not only a building problem. It is your home, often most of your savings, and usually a job you cannot simply walk away from and start again. That is worth saying, because the law deals with it in flat, procedural language that can make the whole thing feel smaller than it is.

What follows is the ground a home owner stands on in New South Wales, in the order it usually matters: the warranties the law puts into your contract, the time you have to use them, the free routes before anything is filed, and where a dispute is decided if it gets that far.

The law puts warranties into your contract

For residential building work, section 18B of the Home Building Act 1989 implies warranties into the contract whether or not anyone typed them in. They cannot be contracted out of, and a term that tries to exclude or restrict them is void.

They are practical promises about the work rather than general assurances of quality, and a defect claim usually identifies which of them has been breached.

That the work will be done with due care and skill, and in accordance with the plans and specifications in the contract.
That the materials will be good and suitable for the purpose they are used for and, unless the contract says otherwise, new.
That the work will comply with the Act and with any other law.
That the work will be done with due diligence and within the time stated, or within a reasonable time if no time is stated.
That a new dwelling will be reasonably fit to live in.
That the work will be reasonably fit for any purpose or result you made known and relied on the contractor's skill and judgement about.

These warranties are separate from, and longer than, the defects liability period in the contract. A builder saying the defects period has ended is not answering the right question. See statutory warranties and who can rely on them.

The clock, and why it comes first

For contracts signed on or after 1 February 2012, proceedings for a breach of statutory warranty have to be started within six years for a major defect and two years for any other defect, measured from completion of the work. Where loss becomes apparent in the last six months of a period, NSW Government guidance describes a further six months to enforce the warranty.

That is why the first question in a defect matter is usually not whether the work is bad. It is when the work was completed and which side of that line each defect falls on. A serious problem discovered in year three is a live claim if it is major and a very difficult one if it is not.

The NSW Government’s guidance adds one piece of relief: where a defect first becomes apparent in the last six months of a warranty period, a further six months is available to begin the dispute process. Treat that as a safety net rather than a plan.

If you bought the house rather than built it, you are generally not shut out. A subsequent owner can ordinarily rely on the statutory warranties for the remainder of the original period, and the separate duty of care under the Design and Building Practitioners Act 2020 is owed to later owners as well.

Find the completion date and write it down before you do anything else. Everything here is counted from it.

Use the free routes before the paid ones

Start with the contractor, in writing. Describe each problem, say what you want done and give a date for a response. Do it even if you have already discussed it on site, because a dispute is decided on the record rather than on conversations.

If that does not work, Building Commission NSW runs a complaint service for building work. An inspector may attend to look at the specific items in dispute, and may issue a rectification order requiring the contractor to do specified work by a date. A great many disputes end there, before anything is filed anywhere.

That step is also usually required. NCAT states that home building disputes must first be referred to NSW Fair Trading, and that evidence of the investigation must be attached unless the matter is exempt. The exemptions include an appeal against an insurer’s decision, claims involving an unlicensed contractor, and a matter where the time for lodging a claim is due to expire within three months.

Write to the contractor, describing each defect and giving a date for a response.
Keep dated photographs and every message. This is your evidence.
Lodge a complaint with Building Commission NSW if the work is not put right.
Notify your home building compensation insurer in writing if the builder cannot or will not finish or fix the work.
Get advice before a warranty period gets close to ending, not after.

Giving the builder a fair chance to return is sensible. Do not let that chance run down a warranty period — the period keeps running whatever is being promised.

If the builder has stopped, or gone

A builder who has walked off site, gone into liquidation, died, disappeared or had their licence suspended is the situation home building compensation cover exists for. It responds as a last resort, and the scheme is regulated by the State Insurance Regulatory Authority.

Find the certificate of cover you should have been given before work started or before you paid any deposit. If you were never given one, say so when you get advice, because that is itself significant.

Do not rush to engage another builder to complete the work before you have taken advice. What you do next can affect both an insurance claim and a claim against the original contractor, and the order of steps matters.

Terminating a building contract is a serious step with its own requirements. Doing it wrongly can turn you from the party owed money into the party who breached.

Money: deposits, progress payments and variations

The Home Building Act caps the deposit a contractor may ask for on residential building work. The current cap is published on the NSW Government’s contracts page, and a contractor asking for more than it is not negotiating.

Progress payments should follow stages of work actually completed rather than dates in the calendar. Paying ahead of the work done is the most common way an owner ends up funding a job they cannot finish.

Changes to the work have to be in writing and signed. A verbal agreement on site is the single most common source of the bills that arrive months later, and it is worth refusing to agree to anything on site that you are not willing to confirm by email the same day.

See variations and scope disputes, and what to check before you sign if you have not signed yet.

Where it is decided

Home building disputes are heard by NCAT in its Consumer and Commercial Division. It can order money to be paid and order work to be done or not done, and it is designed to be usable without a lawyer.

NCAT’s home building jurisdiction covers payment for home building work, incomplete or defective work, specialist work such as electrical, plumbing, gasfitting and air conditioning, damage caused to other structures by home building work, and appeals against an insurer’s decision on a claim.

Larger and more complex matters go to the courts instead, where the procedure is more formal and a losing party ordinarily pays a proportion of the other side’s costs. Which applies depends on the claim, not on preference. See NCAT and court.

What to do this week

If you take nothing else from this page, take these five things. They cost nothing and they are worth more than any letter you could send today.

Find the completion date and write it down.
List every defect with the date you first noticed it.
Photograph everything, today, so the photographs carry today's date.
Put your concerns to the contractor in writing, with a date for a response.
Get advice if any warranty period might be within a year of ending.

Bring the contract and the dates to a first conversation. Almost every early question is answered from those two things. How we work sets out what happens next.