Flood Building Delays

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It's The Real Estate Podcast, brought to you by Ray White, the largest real estate and property group in Australasia. And welcome to another episode of The Real Estate Podcast, available on iHeartRadio, also on Google and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts from. Well, as we know, it's been devastating with flooding across two states when rain thunderously pelted down.

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And I'm always impressed by the kindness, the determination and the spirits of the people that just rush in with that enormous cleanup. It's kind of like the Aussie way, isn't it? Just to roll up the sleeves and to get on with it. So to anyone, any volunteer, regardless of what you have done today, The community applauds you for the long hours and the bloody hard work.

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So well done for all of that. And one of the flow-on effects the floods has caused is for people who are in the middle of a new build. And joining us this morning is an award-winning builder from Brisbane, Chris Munro.

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G'day, Chris. Welcome to the Real Estate Podcast. Thank you for having me. And the water bombs being dumped across Brisbane and the level of the water line has been scary to watch. They say one in 100 year event back in 2011. But with this global warming, I think that we've probably got to stop saying that. That's correct. It's pretty crazy what's going on.

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We didn't think this would be happening again. But yet again, here's this perfect storm with flooding. Now, you're a master builder. And as I mentioned, for people who are in the middle of a new build, the floods are going to throw completion dates in many cases right out the window, which can be extremely challenging for builders and owners to compromise on.

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So how much of a concern is all of that from what you're seeing? Yeah, it's troublesome times ahead in regards to timelines.

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We all know that the insurance companies are going to take away a lot of our finishing trades, and that's fair enough. But we just need to know then it's going to have a knock-on effect for us building, and we're not going to have those trades there at our hands at first sight. And so therefore, it's going to have a knock-on effect.

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So where we were originally taking, you know, six to seven months, we may be taking now nine to nine, 10, 11 months, just trying to get those trades. So when you're talking about finishing trades, can you just explain who that relates to in terms of how they're going to be taken away from completing a new build?

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So with finishing trades, we've got your plasterers, your painters, your electricians, your carpenters, cleaners, tilers. So anyone that's finishing the job off, they're going to be affected by these floods because they're going to have to go in and refinish effectively these houses that have been damaged. Okay, so we've talked about people that are right now in the middle of a new build.

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people going to other jobs in the floods and being held up. So it just needs a little bit of flexibility across the whole industry. And Chris, I heard that your company, Munro Design Homes, was working in reverse to deliver a house because of the shortage of materials and labour. What does that working in reverse mean exactly?

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With our critical trades, like a roofer or a frame, or even plumbers or certain trades you have lack of, We have to book them in first, and I think a roof was a great example of that. 2001, we had the hailstorms come out in Springfield, and we suddenly lost all our roofers.

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So we had to book in roofing trades first, and therefore we would then book in our frame because we knew of a date from there. So you're communicating with your clients, ensuring that they're keeping up to date with supply times and deliveries. The floods, without doubt... would have cost some builders projects through no fault of their own.

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So many things can go wrong. But in this case, the flooding has kind of supercharged, I guess, the tensions. So what's happening with other builders that you know with all of that in mind? Yeah, I think from other builders across the line, what we're seeing is, and we're getting information back from master builders and HIA, is that just to be communicating with our trades as much as possible.

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We're constantly talking with our trades and being flexible that when a concreter, for example, gets held up because of a rainstorm that we've had or can't get to site, that we just need to allow times, slots. You might always have a trade, one day having finished a trade, the next day there'd be another trade.

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But now we're having timelines where there's probably two days of the job sitting there just to make sure if something does go wrong, the job can keep flowing on and not having to rebook trades in. And you mentioned before that with the flooding, delivery times had already blown out from six months to nine months.

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I think the majority of builders are seeing what's happening ahead and we're pre-planning. I think the biggest thing everyone can do is just communication and I think the good guys are doing that and we're just trying to let the general public what's going on as well. And I guess it's a little bit of a dangerous time too if builders are undercutting timeframes against another builder.

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People might be engaged with a builder who says that they can save three or four months on a new build and people can be a little bit seduced by that when perhaps that's not likely to happen. So if you are building a new home, just make sure that you do the right due diligence because if That's really what it's all about at the end of the day, isn't it, Chris? Just really good due diligence.

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That's right. Communicating with your builder, understanding that things might be out of his control. And we see a lot of times when people are about to move into a house, they're moving out of their rental straight away and we haven't got those timelines. Maybe just keeping the back of your mind, having some time up your sleeve.