Feb 2022 - Is there shortage of bricklayer in NSW currently?

Ahh, I see. Thanks for the info @Ashtington Homes. That rhymes rings a bell

Okay everyone, I have had to completely lower myself this afternoon, and I feel really dirty and ashamed as I did something I promised myself I would never do since I left Metricon.....I started phoning prefab timber frame and truss companies! now I need a shower.

My defence is I have taken one for the homeone team, in that there are often questions about frame delays for people building with project home companies, and I am semi desperate for 3 jobs that we are commencing shortly.

Okay, so here is what I have learnt.... we wont be using prefab timber frames.

Essentially most companies in Sydney are booked out until 2023 and wont take on new clients. So I then asked the follow up question of "well just out of curiosity, for your existing clients what are their lead times like?" and the answer was between 4-5 months.

I'll be using steel from here on.

Now I'm off for a wash.

Hi Simeon, hope you're sufficiently cleansed now. As a customer, should I simply be happy with steel, or are there other considerations to be taken into account? My builder hasn't raised this yet, but I would like to have some idea of relevant questions incase he does.

I will PM you some later today

Does steel framed homes mean u will get more plaster cracks due to steels rigidity.

There seems to be delays with supplies and trades currently in NSW. The build progress in my home is very slow and the builder does not seem to be transparent with it.

Can anyone provide and insight update on what's going on and what trades are affected how long is this going to go on for?

Sounds like you are being proactive and organised well.. good for your clients and thanks for the info.

Honestly, with my project.. I wish the builder was just transparent with what is going on to manage clients expectation at least.

There are so many days I drive pass the house just to find out nothing has progressed and get frustrated.

The issue with Tradies on New Builds are many depending on the Builders choices of Subbies or Rates.

Since the pandemic a lot of overseas workers left and went home in fear of being trapped in Australia unable to get back home for an extended period of time. A lot of overseas workers that were working on sites both commercial and residential are on either Student, Holiday or Short Term visas which is why a lot left Australia to go back home.
A lot of companies that work in the industry have the Boss who lives here permanetly and than rotates staff when they fly in to work, which worked well until Covid hit which resulted in no fly ins.

The other issue is Rates which a lot of Local tradies just can not afford to live on after paying their tax, gst, super, insurances, fuel & wages. Some builders generally the smaller guys tend to pay higher rates and this gives them more consistant build times because they can use local trades but maybe less margin. Saying that most will have less overheads than the Large Volume Builders.

The boom in property price is also a problem which has resulted in a lot of people having equity in their house and can not afford to buy elsewhere due to high prices so people have opted in the past few years to renovate and borrow back on their equity. Renovation pays higher for tradies than builders but work can be up and down when in this type of industry. The past few years has seen high growth in the renovation market so most local tradies are generally prefering these type of jobs.

Fires & Floods are having an impact to certain supplies but generally speaking its not that high volume of supplies that actually come from Australia. The insurance claims have also caused a lot of tradies to do insurance work which can be better money for them but its quite chaotic trying to schedule your long term works as they are often required to be completed asap or job goes to the next in line.

Our reliance on overseas materials is a major problem becuase a lot of Australian Companies are owned by overseas countries. When Covid hit most suppliers stopped shipping because of the panic, confusion and the unknown of what we were all going through and wanted to keep products for themselves first suring up their own supply. This caused a domino effect as the shipping industry came to a halt and a lot of shipping companies either parked their ships if they could afford staff and maitain the ships or sent them to scrap metal as a lot did.

The big Volume Builders are building less today than they did 4-6 years ago but we didnt have Covid or the extreme weather events which we seem to be experiencing more often.