Home builder Dale Alcock has offered to purchase a customer’s new house to settle a dispute after the young family complained it was structurally unsound and riddled with defects.
He also offered $30,000 compensation and other terms to Joshua and Nataly Hughes, which they’ve rejected, saying it was inadequate and they wouldn’t be able to buy an equivalent house at today’s prices.
The parents of two young children have brought a case against Mr Alcock’s ABN Group in the State Administrative Tribunal.
The couple explained the battle had exacted a mental, emotional and financial toll on them.
Mr Hughes, 35, is receiving in-home mental health care as a consequence of stress. He claimed acute anxiety over the build also triggered a heart emergency while he was working at a remote mine site in the eastern Goldfields.
He collapsed from ventricular fibrillation in July 2022. He was flown by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to Kalgoorlie, where he spent three days in hospital before going home.
Mrs Hughes, 34, gave up her job as a teacher because she couldn’t cope with the extra workload of fighting the case.
“I had the same job for 13 years as a full-time teacher at a private school. I got to the end of last year, and I was like, I can’t do it anymore,” she said.
“I’m done. I do not have the capacity to be on the phone with them, responding to correspondence (and everything else on top of my job). Resigning meant I didn’t get my maternity leave. It meant a whole bunch of things. But I had to put my health first. I said, ‘If we’re going to pursue this (battle), I am done working’.“
The couple, who met with Mr Alcock and other company representatives face-to-face on May 9, are confident they will be vindicated if and when the matter reaches trial.
Their original complaint to the Building Commissioner cited 60 issues, including a contention the steel-framed, two-storey house in Two Rocks, north of Perth, wasn’t built within the correct boundaries.
Mr Alcock wrote to the couple the day after meeting with them.
“Firstly, I sincerely apologise that we have not been able to deliver your expectations of us,” he wrote.
“Following our meeting, I discussed (with colleagues) at length how we should approach an offer to you to provide you a genuine option to consider, to ensure that you can move forward positively as a family.”
The offer was to buy their home on Reef Break Drive for $560,000 plus $30,000 as compensation.
“You can remain in the house as tenants rent-free for a fixed period of six months from the date of the house transferring to our client,” ABN Group’s lawyer wrote.
“You can continue as tenants in the house after the first six months for a further six months at a weekly rental of $500 as monthly tenants.
“Our client will remediate items within the house to make it liveable for you and your family.”
The Hugheses, who were given five days to decide on the offer, said they calculated they would be worse off and made a counter-offer, which was rejected by the builder.
ABN Group has since communicated that it intends to challenge an order by the SAT to fix 15 of the 60 complaint items that they had previously consented to.
In a letter sent to the couple on May 21, ABN Group’s lawyer stated that they would seek a review of the order to remediate the 15 items at the next SAT hearing on June 11.
The couple, who are expecting their third child in two weeks, said they hoped the SAT would “compel the builder to fulfil their obligations”.
ABN Group’s lawyer warned the couple that if the legal action continued, the SAT would “take into account rejected offers, especially generous offers”.
“In these circumstances, if you reject this generous offer, SAT is more likely to award costs in favour of our client,” he wrote. “We consider that the costs of proceeding from here will be significant.”
Mrs Hughes said she didn’t want to sell in the middle of the housing crisis.
“I made that really clear to Dale at the meeting; I said, ‘I don’t want to sell. We waited three years to be in this house. Just fix it.’
“He said, ‘I’m not going to demolish your house. And I’m not taking it back to plate height.’
“I said, ‘It sounds to me like your company is more than happy to fix paint, carpet, all the surface stuff. But when it’s when we’re talking about real issues, structural issues, that require tearing a wall down, you don’t want to go there.’
“He was asking us to trust him. And I said, ‘Dale, it’s really hard to trust you and your company at this point in time because you’ve let us down over and over again.’
“We were open, honest and vulnerable (during the meeting),” she added. “We spoke about our financial situation, the emotional toll that the build had taken on us, and our wish to keep the house.”
The couple said the company’s offer would have left them worse off.
“The housing market has drastically changed since we secured our mortgage three years ago,” Mrs Hughes said.
‘The likelihood of us finding a block of land in front of the ocean for $115,000 and building the same house for $260,000 is very low. Additionally, we chose this specific block of land because we wanted to see the ocean . . . It was a financial decision to live here and benefit from the smallest entry price to the largest possible exit price once we retired. The notion that Dale buying our house is doing us a favour is, frankly, a joke.”
Mr Hughes said their financial circumstances had changed.
“Three-and-a-half years ago, when we secured our loan through Keystart, our circumstances were markedly different,” he wrote in a letter to ABN.
“Both of us were employed full-time with only one dependent. Our decisions regarding family planning were based on the security of owning our home. Now, with three dependents and a single income, securing a new mortgage will be impossible.
“We respectfully decline (your) offer.”
Mr Hughes said the home had a broader significance to him because he’d never had one as a kid.
“I was a ward of the State growing up. I was orphaned when I was about 3½. And I was in care. I’ve had over 30 foster places, and I’ve moved over 100 times. This was supposed to be my one home. “
Mr Hughes, a carpenter by trade, said they chose to build with the ABN Group’s Homebuyers Centre because he held Mr Alcock and his companies in the highest regard as builders.
He said the structural defects in the steel-framed building were the most pressing to resolve, but there was so much else that was wrong.
“All the measurements are out,” Mr Hughes said.
“The slab height is wrong. The windows and doors aren’t level, the walls are not plumb, and the floor heights are incorrect.
“There are missing anchor bolts (meant to hold the house down.)“
He said there was no roof cover for a six-month period, leaving the particle-board flooring exposed over winter. He said it was not replaced as promised prior to the carpets and tiles being installed.
Consequently, black mould was visible just four weeks after they moved in.
It was during the period when there was no roof cover that Mr Hughes had his heart emergency.
“The house was exposed, and it was about to start raining. Nat, with (our then) two-week-old second child, was upstairs trying to cover all the cracks so that the water didn’t get in and penetrate through the particle board,” he said.
“I was so stressed out. I was working 12 weeks on the mine site straight to pay for everything.
“I was trying to maintain my job (as a trainee driller), maintain our finances and my house was falling into shit in front of me and knowing what my wife was going through was a contributing stress factor.”
The couple later became concerned about the corroded state of the screws used in the roof. They arranged an inspection by Luke Buchanan, a technical specialist for fastening company ICCONS.
“I can confirm the presence of significant corrosion in the self-drilling screws used to fix the top hat batten to the steel frame. The roof sheets are then attached to this top hat,” Mr Buchanan reported.
“This corrosive profile will only get worse over time, with the potential longer-term issue of losing the roof, should a significant weather event occur.
“The position of the house in relation to the coastline and the atmospheric salinity in this environment will only hasten this existing corrosion, particularly as it appears the steel has had no sarking wrap applied.”
Mr Hughes said the home was uninsured because no company was willing to insure it in its current state.
ABN Group residential executive general manager Dean O’Rourke said the company took the Hughes’ concerns seriously and continued to engage with the couple to address them.
“We have been transparent in our communication and have commissioned independent assessments and inspections at our own cost to investigate their concerns,” he said.
“Whilst we have engaged with Mr and Mrs Hughes in good faith, we have been unable to resolve their alleged issues to their satisfaction.
“We will continue to communicate with them through the appropriate channels to ensure the best possible outcome for both parties, including any determination by SAT.
“Due to the ongoing legal proceedings with the Hughes family, it would be inappropriate to provide further comment at this time.”