Donna Jones’s new “lovely little one-bedroom unit” was supposed to be part of her retirement plan.
The 63-year-old disability support worker’s new apartment, which she bought off-the-plan from the Bathla Group, looked great.
It would be smaller and easier to manage, much closer to her grandchildren than her old place, and, she believed, ready in just a couple of months.
After almost a year of delays, Jones was shocked to learn in the media that Bathla, one of New South Wales’s largest property developers, was not only broke, but on the verge of being liquidated.
“I’m terrified that I’m going to lose my deposit,” Jones says. “I’ve worked all my life. I was a single mother. This was my retirement.”
Jones isn’t alone; thousands of homebuyers were left in the lurch by the sudden announcement on 25 August that Bathla had gone into voluntary administration, weighed down by almost $3.6bn in debt.
Bathla’s customers aren’t alone, either. While the developer’s size has turned its collapse into a major news story, thousands of other building companies have gone bust in the past year – some of which had sold people apartments with defects.
The Bathla crisis has shone a spotlight on broader problems in the…