A single corporate structure now sits inside the construction insolvency figures that will be quoted for the next twelve months. Taking it out moves the number by fourteen percentage points.
On 25 August 2026, 540 construction companies entered voluntary administration.
Not across the month. On the day, with the same administrator appointed over all of them.
They are the Universal Property Group entities behind the Bathla Group, a Sydney residential developer and builder. The company has said publicly that it faced softening sales, changes arising from the May federal Budget and rising construction costs.
That single event is larger than two ordinary months of construction insolvencies nationally. It also sits inside a national figure that is widely read as a count of builders going under.
The figure it produces is 37.4 per cent. The figure underneath it is 23.5
Across July and August 2026, construction accounted for 37.4 per cent of every company entering external administration in Australia, computed from the ASIC dataset published on 14 September.
Strip out the 540 entities registered on that one day and the same two months read 23.5 per cent, which is close to where the number has been sitting for years.
The series is doing exactly what it is built to do, which is record companies entering external administration. The care needs to go into how the figure is read, and it is going to be read a great deal between now and next July.
What the ASIC count actually measures
ASIC Series 1 records the first time a company enters external administration or has a controller appointed. The unit is the registered company, not the business, the site or the project. A developer that holds each stage of each estate in its own special purpose vehicle can contribute hundreds of separate entries on the day the group fails. A sole director building company contributes one. The count measures corporate structures, not builders.
The underlying rate has not moved in five years
Here is the full run, computed from the same dataset.
| Financial year | Construction | All industries | Construction share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-22 | 1,284 | 4,912 | 26.1% |
| 2022-23 | 2,213 | 7,942 | 27.9% |
| 2023-24 | 2,977 | 11,053 | 26.9% |
| 2024-25 | 3,596 | 14,722 | 24.4% |
| 2025-26 | 3,472 | 14,153 | 24.5% |
Analysis of ASIC Insolvency Statistics, Series 1, companies entering external administration or having a controller appointed for the first time. Dataset published 14 September 2026.
Two things in that table are worth separating. The first is that last year went down. The 3,472 figure sits below the 3,596 recorded in 2024-25. We reported the fall when the preliminary data landed in July, and the full year numbers have held it.
The second is that the share has not moved. Construction has sat between roughly 24 and 28 per cent of national company failures every year since 2021-22, while accounting for around 17 per cent of Australian businesses. That gap has survived a rate cycle, a cost shock and a national housing target.
The shortage has not changed the failure rate
The National Housing Accord target is 1.2 million new homes by June 2029. The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council now expects that number to be reached in the December quarter of 2030, and expects no jurisdiction to reach its own share inside the Accord period.
So the work exists. The shortfall is measured in hundreds of thousands of dwellings, and the failure rate has held at about a quarter of national company failures right through it.
Demand is not the constraint. Three other things are.
Building costs rose about 30 per cent in five years, and the index leaves margin out
The Insurance Council of Australia published its Catastrophe Resilience Report for 2025-26 in August. It uses the Cordell Construction Cost Index to put the national cost of building a home up around 30 per cent over the five years to 2026, against consumer price growth of about 24 per cent.
Underneath that average the spread is wide. Roof tiles are up 77 per cent. Windows and plaster products are up 48 per cent, plywood 45 per cent, copper pipe and fittings 41 per cent. On labour, the same report puts roofer salaries up 50.4 per cent over five years and glaziers up 46.4 per cent, against 16.4 per cent for carpenters and joiners.
States differ more than the national number suggests. Queensland sits at 44.65 per cent and New South Wales at 40.36. On the Council house model, a standard Brisbane home moved from $344,000 in June 2021 to $498,000 in June 2026.
The detail worth noting sits in the data note beneath those tables. The model covers materials and labour and explicitly excludes builder margin. The most widely quoted measure of what it costs to build a house in Australia describes the inputs and not the return.
The most widely quoted measure of what it costs to build a house in Australia describes the inputs and not the return.
Fixed price contracts decide who carries the difference
A cost index is an industry average. A contract is a number.
Residential building in Australia is largely sold on a fixed price, agreed at signing and delivered over a program that can run twelve to eighteen months. The consumer protection logic behind that is sound and the form is heavily prescribed in most states. The commercial consequence is that movement in input costs between signing and completion sits with the builder unless the contract says otherwise.
That is the mechanism behind the problem that has followed the industry since HomeBuilder. Volume signed at one price level gets built at another.
Phil Barrett, who spent more than 40 years in Australian housing, told The Good Builder Podcast that the industry as a whole tended to overtrade through that period, chasing demand past the capacity of trades and supply chains. Overtrade against your available capital, or against the number of quality trades actually on the ground, and “you can lose money very quickly”.
The cost movement above is the reason that risk has not gone away. The contract structure is the reason it lands where it does.
Three national priorities are recruiting from the same trades
The Powering Skills Organisation, the Jobs and Skills Council for energy, gas and renewables, published its 2026 Targeted Workforce Update this month. It estimates Australia needs an additional 42,000 energy trades workers by 2030 for the energy transition, 17,000 for housing, and 13,000 for data centre construction and operations.
Those are not three labour markets. They are three claims on one pool of electricians and technicians. The same update reports 55 per cent of employers carrying vacancies open for more than six months, and 72 per cent of training providers already at or above capacity for electrotechnology students.
Disaster repair is the fourth claim and the least counted. Insurers received 409,094 catastrophe and significant event home claims between 2022 and 2026. In 2025 alone, five declared events damaged around 145,000 homes, against about 173,000 dwellings completed nationally. A home rebuilt on its original site is recorded by the Bureau of Statistics as a new dwelling. It consumes the trades of a new build and adds nothing to supply.
The lending side is the part nobody can see
The Reserve Bank noted in its March 2026 Financial Stability Review that lending standards among non bank lenders had eased somewhat, and that the most notable easing, while still modest, was for property developers. It named less stringent presales requirements and some reduced collateral requirements.
It also said something more useful about what is not known. Information on lending by non bank lenders, and by private credit firms in particular, is more limited than for banks. Private credit sits at under 2 per cent of financial system assets, which the Bank reads as limiting the systemic risk.
Systemic risk is not the question for a builder or a subcontractor. Counterparty risk is. Presales coverage is the test that indicated whether a project about to start had real buyers behind it, and where it has been relaxed, it has been relaxed quietly and on the lender side of the table.
The next Financial Stability Review is due on 1 October.
The target describes demand, not delivery capacity
The Accord target counts homes. It does not count the businesses required to deliver them, or model whether they can carry the cost movement, the contract structure and the labour competition at the same time.
The August Council report showed detached house completions fell 6.1 per cent over twelve months while approvals for those same homes rose. Houses under construction are around 14 per cent below their 2022 peak, even as the total pipeline hit a record on the back of apartments and townhouses.
A target counts homes. The failure rate counts who is still there to build them. And when that rate gets quoted over the next twelve months, the question worth asking is how many companies sit behind the number, and how many businesses.
Frequently asked questions
3,472 construction companies entered external administration or had a controller appointed for the first time during the 2025-26 financial year, on analysis of the ASIC Series 1 dataset published on 14 September 2026. That is down from 3,596 in 2024-25 and up from 2,977 in 2023-24.
24.5 per cent in 2025-26, from a national total of 14,153. The construction share has sat between roughly 24 and 28 per cent every year since 2021-22, which makes construction consistently the largest single source of company failure in Australia. Construction accounts for around 17 per cent of Australian businesses.
Demand is not the constraint. The cost of building a home rose around 30 per cent in the five years to 2026 while consumer prices rose about 24 per cent, and most residential work is sold on a fixed price agreed months before completion, which places movement in input costs with the builder. Labour is being bid for simultaneously by housing, the energy transition, data centre construction and disaster repair. Finance for residential development increasingly comes from non bank and private credit lenders, where the Reserve Bank has reported some easing of presales and collateral requirements and where public information is limited.
No. ASIC counts registered companies, not businesses or groups. On 25 August 2026, 540 construction companies entered voluntary administration on a single day with one administrator appointed across them, as part of a single group collapse. That is why the construction share of national failures reads 37.4 per cent across July and August 2026, and 23.5 per cent once that one event is removed.
The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council forecast in its August 2026 Quarterly Report that the 1.2 million target will be reached in the December quarter of 2030, one quarter later than it forecast in April. The Accord period itself ends in June 2029, and the Council does not expect any jurisdiction to reach its share within it.
RELATED ARTICLES
- For the wider picture on supply, capacity and market conditions, see the Australian Construction Industry Trends Guide: https://thegoodbuilder.com.au/australian-construction-industry-trends-guide/
- On the labour competition in detail: When AI Needs a Building Permit, https://thegoodbuilder.com.au/when-ai-needs-a-building-permit-how-the-data-centre-boom-is-draining-the-trades-that-build-homes/
Last updated: 21 September 2026. Sources: ASIC Insolvency Statistics Series 1 and 2, dataset published 14 September 2026. Insurance Council of Australia, Insurance Catastrophe Resilience Report 2025-26. Powering Skills Organisation, 2026 Targeted Workforce Update. Reserve Bank of Australia, Financial Stability Review March 2026. National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, Quarterly Report August 2026.
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Author: TGB Editorial
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