Twelve houses in a Sunshine Coast street remain unfinished years after home buyers signed contracts for their construction.
The homes on Cambridge Place, in the King Windsor estate at Burnside, are shells disappearing behind the weeds that have taken over during summer. Some have interior walls, some have cabinetry and some do not have completed exterior cladding.
They have been untouched since Catapult Building, trading as Catapult Homes, stopped work on all of its jobs – 26 homes from Logan to the Sunshine Coast – in October.
Sunshine Coast News understands the Cambridge Place home buyers signed contracts for the homes as long as three years ago and expected to be living in them by now, but are stuck paying rent as well as mortgages.
An attempt was made to reach out to a group of them on social media and although some were clearly unhappy with Catapult, none wanted to speak on the record.
A check of Queensland Building and Construction Commission records shows that Catapult Building’s licence was suspended on December 11 last year for failure to comply with an audit and cancelled the next day at the licence holder’s request.
Catapult Building director Dylan Crowe said the company was forced to suspend building work because it no longer met the minimal financial requirements for a QBCC licence.
Mr Crowe said the company had experienced financial stress from a range of Catapult Group activities including housing construction and property development, and cited rising inflation, lending conditions and an overall reduction in the group’s capital position as issues.
“We suffered significant financial losses across our land developments, including the King Windsor estate and our housing construction from 2021 to 2023, and have been unable to recover and have failed to recapitalise the business, despite extensive efforts to refinance existing projects or seek capital extensions,” he said.
Mr Crowe said the most recent attempt to recapitalise failed to meet a QBCC deadline, “forcing our hand to shut down”.
“When we were faced with the reality this was going to occur, we began communicating with our customers, letting them know. This occurred during the first two weeks of November,” he said.
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Mr Crowe said meetings were held with multiple builders to find solutions for customers but the two that quoted would have cost more than the contract price, leaving many buyers to turn to the Home Warranty Insurance process with the QBCC to try and get their homes completed.
“I personally called almost every single customer we had and explained the position and what had happened, as well as offering to help them with the process of lodging an application with the QBCC,” Mr Crowe said.
He said Catapult was trying to help its customers.
“We are absolutely devastated that our business activities have had an impact on our customers. We communicated this in multiple ways last year, and we are working with many of them to move them through the process with the QBCC.”
Creation Homes has taken over contracts for nine Catapult Homes where construction had not yet started but general manger Paul Ryan said it could not take on the partially built houses for the amounts left on the Catapult contracts.
The QBCC does not comment on specific cases or investigations that are not yet finalised.
QBCC records show Catapult Building had previously been issued with two direction notices in 2020 and 2024 for non-structural issues, and was fined $1378 for failing to respond to a payment claim with a payment schedule within the required period in June 2022.
ASIC documents show an application to wind up Brisbane-based Catapult Building was made in June 2023 but dismissed in August 2023. The company remains registered.
Two Catapult companies involved in the development of the land have been in strife, ASIC records show.
The Catapult Property Group went into administration in April 2024 after an application to wind up the company was made a month earlier. The company entered into a deed of arrangement in June. It is still listed as under external administration.
An application to wind up Catapult Developments was made in December 2023 but withdrawn in June 2024. It remains a registered company.
