Homeowners: Act quickly on price hikes by builders

Director, Murray Thornhill, and Special Counsel, Daniel Morris in our Building & Construction and Dispute Resolution teams have outlined how home builders are looking to scrape back profits lost on growing labour and material costs by passing these costs on to buyers.

Increasingly across Western Australia, home builders are seeking to claw back profits lost on rising labour and material costs by passing those costs on to their customers. Some invite their customers to negotiate a genuine repricing; many, though, are seeking to impose unlawful price increases on their customers and incorrectly stating that their contracts entitle them to do so.

Home builders who try to impose price increases tend to rely on clauses that are common in home building contracts that allow home builders to pass on the cost of delayed planning approval, building permits, or some other precondition to the works commencing, such as finance approval. Often, however, the true cause of delay