From Roofer to Franchise Owner: Ben Donaghy on Why a Good Builder Connects People
Ben Donaghy came up through roofing, carpentry, concreting, rigging and commercial site management before opening Stroud Homes Brisbane North. He told Az what that path taught him about trades, transparency and tricky blocks. Ask Ben Donaghy what makes a good builder...
Arada’s Campsie Tower Clears the Fast Track Over Council Objections.
A 156 apartment tower opposite Campsie's new metro station has been approved through the state's Housing Delivery Authority pathway. The approval came quickly. A 33 storey tower opposite Campsie station has been approved in a matter of months, over the formal...
A Blower Door, a Rammed Earth Build and Why Healthy Home Builders Are Meeting in Person
Builders who learned healthy building online spent a day on a Northern Rivers site and an evening in Sydney together. What happened in the room says a lot about how practice actually changes. The blower door was meant to be a demonstration. Within minutes it had...
Home Values Have Fallen Six Months Running. The Gap Shows Up at the Final Claim.
Established home values are falling while the cost of building keeps rising. On a new build, those two lines meet at the lender’s valuation, and the bill for any gap usually arrives with the last progress claim. National home values have now fallen for six months in a...
latest news
The Construction Data Nobody Sees Is Starting to Tell a Different Story
Approvals are up, more homes are under construction than ever recorded and dwelling investment just hit a record. Read the datasets underneath those headlines together and they describe an industry that is busier, more expensive and finishing a smaller share of what...
Both Sides Now Promise to Cut Victoria’s Land Tax. The Real Contest Is Timing and Cost.
Labor has pledged to lift the land tax threshold back to $300,000 if returned at the November election. The Coalition made a similar promise in May. The differences sit in the timetable, the funding, and what the law already does after 2033. Victoria's land tax is set...
Australia Is Rebuilding Its Building Supply Chain. Not Every Link Is Coming Home.
Governments are spending billions to keep steel, aluminium, cement and timber made here, and factories are moving closer to the building site. Some materials have already gone offshore for good. For most of the past 30 years, the materials on a residential site came...
Celebrating Australian Framing Solutions 50 Millionth Metre of TRUECORE® Steel: From the Factory Floor to a Coral Homes Handover
A few months ago, The Good Builder stood on the factory floor at Australian Framing Solutions as something pretty significant came off the roll-forming line. The 50 millionth metre of TRUECORE® steel produced by Australian Framing Solutions (AFS) using Scottsdale...
Mayde Prices Queensland Homes From $234,400, Leaving Room Under the $750,000 Grant Cap
A builder focused entirely on first home buyers has put a price on all 26 of its Queensland designs. Eleven come in under $300,000, and the numbers show how much land a buyer can still afford before the state's grant cap applies. Price is the first question every...
At 4.6 Per Cent, the Feasibility Squeeze Is Reshaping Australia’s Building Pipeline
Four rate rises in 2026 have not stopped Australians borrowing to build houses. What they are changing is which projects still stack up, and apartments, spec builds and renovations are feeling it first. The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29...
Canberra Is Consulting on Construction Standards Tied to Public Money. Who Could They Reach?
A federal consultation closing 16 October asks whether Commonwealth funded construction work should come with minimum standards on conduct, payment, workforce and safety. No model has been chosen, but most states already use public work this way. The Federal...
Alex Palazzolo on Why Builders Lose Clients in the Small Things
A missed call. An invoice nobody expected. A weekend spent wondering what is happening on site. Melbourne builder Alex Palazzolo says that is where client trust is really lost, and he has built his business around closing those gaps. Most builders can tell you about...
MORE NEWS
The QBCC Is Mapping Defect Hotspots Suburb by Suburb. The Map Itself Stays With the Regulator
Queensland's building regulator is layering defect trends, licensee risk and warranty claims onto maps to decide where inspectors go. The regional patterns it has released show defects are not spread evenly, and neither is the scrutiny that follows them. Where a home...
Nostra Homes Nearly Doubled Its Output by Betting on Townhouses. The Business Model Is the Story
A Melbourne builder has grown annual deliveries from 215 to 402 homes in five years after moving almost its entire book into townhouses. The growth is the headline. How the work now arrives, and what it does to output per person, is the part other builders can use....
The Spare Bedroom Debate: Is Australia Starting to Rethink What a Housing Shortage Means?
Census data shows almost four million households with two or more spare bedrooms, and the national housing council is now tracking the figure. No spare bedroom tax is on the table, but the way housing supply is measured is starting to shift. Australia’s housing debate...
Mandatory Standards Are Going Free. Why Did Builders and Tradies Ever Pay to Read the Law?
The Federal Government has finished the legislative work to fund free online access to Australian Standards written into law. The fix is welcome. The harder question is why it took the best part of twenty years. If you wire a house, plumb a bathroom or frame a wall,...
The Good Builder Podcast
PARTNER CONTENT
National Courses Explains How to Check If a White Card Is Genuine
Most builders glance at a White Card, see the right colours and a photo that matches the face in front of them, and let the worker through. That's about as useful as checking if a $50 note is pink. A card can look completely normal and still be fake, copied, or issued...
Solar Is Still Missing From Most New Builds, and the Barrier Is Warranty Exposure Rather Than Cost or Technology
More than 4.2 million rooftop solar systems have been installed across Australia. Another 478,176 home batteries went in between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 alone, adding 13.58 gigawatt hours of storage in twelve months. Almost none of that work happens during...
Goop Guys Names Mark Sutton General Manager. He Says Surface Protection Is a Risk Decision, Not a Cost Line.
The new general manager of the Sunshine Coast surface protection business has spent a career in hardware, paint and building products. His first read on the market is that builders skipping protection are not cutting costs. They are taking a bet. A $5,000 bathtub gets...
Seven Star Energy Requirements Pushed Builders Into High Performance Glazing, Changing What a Damaged Window Now Costs
The glass going into Australian homes is more expensive, more technical and harder to replace than it was five years ago. Site practice has not caught up. For most of the past decade, a scratched window on a residential site was a nuisance with a known price. The...
The Cold That Quietly Costs Builders Every Winter, and How to Take the Bite Out of It
Winter on the tools is more than a miserable morning. Across a season it slows the work, wears down the crew, and quietly eats into the margin. Here is what the cold really costs, and why The Good Builder and Milwaukee are giving something back to the builders who cop...
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MyConstruct and BuiltGrid Bring RFQs and Pricing Into One Connected Workflow
Why more builders are moving procurement out of the inbox and into the system they already run their jobs from. There is a moment most builders know well. The job is mapped out, the costs are still moving, and the plan for the week is clear enough. Then you open your...
The Surface Damage That Quietly Costs Everyone on Site, and How to Stop It Before It Starts
A chipped benchtop or a scratched pane of glass rarely stops a job. But across a build, that kind of damage quietly costs both the builder and the trades real time and real money. Here is why it happens, and how Goop Guys' surface protection removes the cost before it...
Your Next Job Comes From Your Last Client: Why Every Builder Needs a Customer Experience Program
Of every tool a builder can put in their business, a customer experience program is one of the most critical. It is not the flashiest. It is one of the most important, and here is what it actually does. Ask most builders where their next job comes from and they will...
The New Priorities Shaping Multi-Residential Projects
The current state of Australia’s housing market is pressured, to say the least. New apartments and built-to-rent developments still lag behind demand, and although some states show promising growth in stock, forecasts from the National Housing Supply and Affordability...
industry profiles
Alex Palazzolo on Why Builders Lose Clients in the Small Things
A missed call. An invoice nobody expected. A weekend spent wondering what is happening on site. Melbourne builder Alex Palazzolo says that is where client trust is really lost, and he has built his business around closing those gaps. Most builders can tell you about...
Stylemaster Won’t Take a Deposit Without a CanIBuild Digital Siting. Its Sales Manager Explains Why.
Every Stylemaster Homes deposit now comes with a siting of the home on the client’s actual block. On today’s podcast, Megan Burraston Sales Manager and a Can I Build Account Manager Mark Garner explained what that changes in a builder’s sales process. Most builders...
Vista Built’s Mitch Thompson on Choosing Clients, Keeping Trades and Building Past the Minimum
Vista Built runs with three people in Victoria's Macedon Ranges and has a year of work ahead while much of the market waits. On The Good Builder Podcast, Mitch Thompson explained the decisions behind that. Plenty of builders are describing a quiet market right now....
97 Per Cent of Bricklaying Is New Construction. Andy Shaw Says That Is the Whole Problem.
Andy Shaw started his apprenticeship at 14, ran a bricklaying business for 15 years and has since worked alongside more than 25 bricklaying businesses around the country. On the podcast he set out why the trade is built differently to every other one on site, and why...
National Safe Work Month Opens on the Long Term Cost of Harm, and Residential Sites Still Carry a Documentation Gap
A manager fell two storeys at 23 and lost his job before the ambulance reached him. What he says about the years afterwards lands on the same point as this year’s campaign theme, and on the paperwork residential builders are still missing. Safe Work Australia has set...
QA Build Bought Its Own Cabinetry, Solar and Electrical Businesses. James Drever Calls It Removing the Roadblock
The chief executive of QA Build runs a business that owns a slice of its own supply chain, works two months ahead of site and is building its own trade college. He told the Good Builder Podcast the thinking started with a roofing shortage. Most builders answer a...
Chris Baskerville Answers Your Questions on the Bathla Collapse, From Who Gets Paid First to How Long It Takes
We asked our community what they wanted to know about the Bathla administration. The questions that came back were about exposure, not blame, and the answers turned on one distinction. “If you have a bill outstanding before the administrator rolls in, that money...
Vinnie Vecchio – TPB Head Coach Says the Fix for Bad Cash Flow Sits in the Contract, Not the Bank Account
Vinnie Vecchio coaches builders across four countries. Asked what the single biggest constraint is, he did not hesitate. Then he broke it into parts. Ask a builder what is hurting the business and you usually get a list. Trades. Clients. Prices. Approvals. Weather....
Johno the Plumber on Care Factor, Accountability and Why Trades Have Stopped Looking Out for Each Other
Robert Cragg (aka Johno the Plumber) has spent twenty four years on the tools in Melbourne. His argument is that the standards problem in Australian construction has less to do with skill than with who is willing to protect the next trade through the door. Ask Robert...
home builder news
A Blower Door, a Rammed Earth Build and Why Healthy Home Builders Are Meeting in Person
Builders who learned healthy building online spent a day on a Northern Rivers site and an evening in Sydney together. What happened in the room says a lot about how practice actually changes. The blower door was meant to be a demonstration. Within minutes it had...
Home Values Have Fallen Six Months Running. The Gap Shows Up at the Final Claim.
Established home values are falling while the cost of building keeps rising. On a new build, those two lines meet at the lender’s valuation, and the bill for any gap usually arrives with the last progress claim. National home values have now fallen for six months in a...
The Construction Data Nobody Sees Is Starting to Tell a Different Story
Approvals are up, more homes are under construction than ever recorded and dwelling investment just hit a record. Read the datasets underneath those headlines together and they describe an industry that is busier, more expensive and finishing a smaller share of what...
Celebrating Australian Framing Solutions 50 Millionth Metre of TRUECORE® Steel: From the Factory Floor to a Coral Homes Handover
A few months ago, The Good Builder stood on the factory floor at Australian Framing Solutions as something pretty significant came off the roll-forming line. The 50 millionth metre of TRUECORE® steel produced by Australian Framing Solutions (AFS) using Scottsdale...
Mayde Prices Queensland Homes From $234,400, Leaving Room Under the $750,000 Grant Cap
A builder focused entirely on first home buyers has put a price on all 26 of its Queensland designs. Eleven come in under $300,000, and the numbers show how much land a buyer can still afford before the state's grant cap applies. Price is the first question every...
At 4.6 Per Cent, the Feasibility Squeeze Is Reshaping Australia’s Building Pipeline
Four rate rises in 2026 have not stopped Australians borrowing to build houses. What they are changing is which projects still stack up, and apartments, spec builds and renovations are feeling it first. The Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60 per cent on 29...
The QBCC Is Mapping Defect Hotspots Suburb by Suburb. The Map Itself Stays With the Regulator
Queensland's building regulator is layering defect trends, licensee risk and warranty claims onto maps to decide where inspectors go. The regional patterns it has released show defects are not spread evenly, and neither is the scrutiny that follows them. Where a home...
Nostra Homes Nearly Doubled Its Output by Betting on Townhouses. The Business Model Is the Story
A Melbourne builder has grown annual deliveries from 215 to 402 homes in five years after moving almost its entire book into townhouses. The growth is the headline. How the work now arrives, and what it does to output per person, is the part other builders can use....
The Spare Bedroom Debate: Is Australia Starting to Rethink What a Housing Shortage Means?
Census data shows almost four million households with two or more spare bedrooms, and the national housing council is now tracking the figure. No spare bedroom tax is on the table, but the way housing supply is measured is starting to shift. Australia’s housing debate...
She Built a Career in Colombia. Now She Is Helping Build Sydney’s Hospitals.
Andrea Ramirez Pertuz arrived in Australia with a civil engineering degree and a plan. Her path to working on some of Sydney's biggest hospital redevelopments offers a practical lesson in how the industry absorbs skilled migrants when the system works properly. Andrea...
Victoria’s Top Apprentice Started With a Job Ad for Antarctica
Hannah Dillimore didn't take the conventional path into the trades. She saw an ad for welders in Antarctica and thought, that's interesting. She wasn't ready for the South Pole, but the spark was lit. The 27-year-old from Melbourne's South East is now Victoria's 2026...
AWIC Awards 2026: Nominations Are Open
The Awesome Women in Construction Awards are back for their fifth year, and if you haven't paid attention before, 2026 might be the year to start. The AWIC Awards aren't just a gala night. They're one of the few places in this industry where the people doing the...
From Support Work to Sawdust: How One Northern Rivers Mum Found Her Trade.
Abbey Paxton changed careers after a horse riding accident, walked into a TAFE classroom at 30 with two kids at home, and has since renovated her first house. Her story is exactly what the construction industry needs more of. And there has never been a better time to...
Canberra Is Consulting on Construction Standards Tied to Public Money. Who Could They Reach?
A federal consultation closing 16 October asks whether Commonwealth funded construction work should come with minimum standards on conduct, payment, workforce and safety. No model has been chosen, but most states already use public work this way. The Federal...
The Spare Bedroom Debate: Is Australia Starting to Rethink What a Housing Shortage Means?
Census data shows almost four million households with two or more spare bedrooms, and the national housing council is now tracking the figure. No spare bedroom tax is on the table, but the way housing supply is measured is starting to shift. Australia’s housing debate...
Mandatory Standards Are Going Free. Why Did Builders and Tradies Ever Pay to Read the Law?
The Federal Government has finished the legislative work to fund free online access to Australian Standards written into law. The fix is welcome. The harder question is why it took the best part of twenty years. If you wire a house, plumb a bathroom or frame a wall,...
The Productivity Commission Says Zoned Land Is Not Ready Land. Infrastructure Is the Gap
Rezoning and approvals have carried the housing supply debate. The Productivity Commission's interim report puts the water, sewer, power and roads underneath them on the same footing, and describes where approved land stalls. A rezoning tells you what land is allowed...
R U OK? Day Asks Workers to Notice When Someone Is Struggling. The Safety Code Already Requires It.
An awareness campaign sits at the bottom of the hierarchy of controls. That does not make it worthless. It makes it the check on whether everything above it is working. A safety tag is the least remarkable object on a site. A strip of weatherproof poly, a wire loop, a...
Why Looking After Your Business Is Part of Looking After Yourself
Most builders blame themselves when the pressure becomes too much. On a recent Good Builder Podcast, estimator Josh Peapoint made a different case. A lot of that pressure is built into how the business runs, not who the builder is. No builder burns out because they...
When the Business Goes Under, the Family Goes With It
Behind every insolvency statistic is a person. Usually a couple. Often a family. The construction industry talks constantly about cashflow and contracts. It almost never talks about this. In 2024, more than 3,200 construction companies in Australia entered insolvency...
The Number That Should Stop the Construction Industry in Their Tracks
There is a number that sits behind every conversation about mental health in the Australian construction industry, and it does not get said often enough. On average, a construction worker takes their own life every two days in Australia. Not per week. Every two days....
US Construction Added 120,000 Jobs in a Year. It Still Has 326,000 Positions Open.
American construction is hiring steadily, yet vacancies keep climbing as data centre work pulls tradespeople toward big projects and retirements thin the workforce. The industry is starting to treat labour as a productivity problem, not just a recruitment one....
Japan Will Check Building Approvals Straight From BIM Data From Spring 2029
Japan's building ministry has published its plan to make the BIM model, not the drawing set, the thing regulators check. The roadmap runs to 2029, and it keeps a human firmly in charge of every approval. Japan has set a date for the moment building approvals stop...
New Zealand Building Activity Rose 4.8% in the June Quarter, Led by Housing and Canterbury
After a long downturn, Stats NZ figures show building work on the ground finally picking up. Housing is carrying the recovery, Canterbury is leading the regions, and Wellington is still going the other way. New Zealand's building industry has had a rough couple of...
Singapore Will Fund Robot Suppliers to Lease Machines to Builders. The Aim Is Everyday Use.
Singapore already has more than 20 robotics and automation solutions ready for construction sites. A new leasing scheme announced in September is designed to get them off the demonstration floor and onto ordinary projects by taking the ownership risk away from...
US Builders Are Discounting Harder as Mortgage Rates Push Buyers Out of Reach
Builder confidence has dropped to a one year low, two in three builders are using sales incentives and the average 30 year mortgage rate is back above 7%. The American market is showing that building homes and selling them are two very different problems. America's...
Four Countries, Four Housing Crises, One Recurring Answer That Nobody Wants to Hear
The United States, Britain, New Zealand and Canada all need more homes. All four are producing fewer. The specific causes differ in every case. The underlying failure does not, and it is the one thing policy keeps refusing to buy. Line up the four markets and the...
Canada Is About to Find Out Whether a Government Can Order Its Way to a Modular Industry
Modular construction has never failed on engineering. It fails on order books. Canada is about to run the largest test yet of whether guaranteed demand is the missing ingredient, and the answer matters well beyond Canada. Six federal sites across Canada are due to...
Britain’s New Building Levy Starts on 1 October. The Bill Does Not Arrive Until the Job Is Finished.
The Building Safety Levy has been years in the making and lands in ten weeks. The design detail everyone missed is when you actually pay it, and that detail changes who it hurts. From 1 October 2026, England introduces the Building Safety Levy on new residential...
New Zealand Consents Are Up 19 Per Cent While Building Work Keeps Falling. Both Numbers Are True.
The consent data says recovery. The activity data says the floor has not arrived. If you have ever tried to explain to a client why a strong pipeline does not pay this month’s wages, this is that argument with a country attached. Stats NZ recorded 39,737 new dwellings...
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