From ‘Wild West’ to Gold Standard: How NSW’s Building Commissioner Revitalised a $24 Billion Industry
Buyer confidence returns to the multi- residential market as certification kicks in
4 min
There was a time not so long ago that the NSW building industry was referred to as the Wild West. One in 10 new residential apartment blocks in NSW had serious defects and there was no way to tell the good developers from the bad, as buyers crossed their fingers and hoped for the best when choosing a new apartment. As NSW Building Commissioner David Chandler joked, people buying new apartments had less consumer protection than someone buying a toaster or washing machine.
Add to that the scenes that played out on the nightly news of the thousands of residents evacuated from their Sydney Olympic Park apartment block on Christmas Eve 2018 as it threatened to collapse, followed by the 130 residents given hours to flee their Mascot apartment months later.
Into this scenario stepped the first ever NSW Building Commissioner, David Chandler. In just four short years, he has managed to bring a new transparency and confidence to the $24 billion industry. As one industry expert put it, “he managed to turn the Titanic around” not only because of the positive changes he brought to the industry, but the speed with which he did it.
“I remember back in the day the barbecue conversation was ‘You wouldn’t buy an apartment built in the last 10 years’,” says Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW CEO, Steve Mann.
“That was probably not right but there were enough problems for that to be a reasonable conclusion for consumers. We lost the confidence of consumers and no industry can afford to do that.
“So, although that was just true of the fringes (of the industry), we had to hone in on those fringes and reign it in.
“And that required very strong leadership.”
It is almost universally accepted in the building industry that one of the most positive changes in recent years is the introduction of the independent Construction Industry Rating Tool (iCIRT). It allows consumers buying a new or off-the-plan apartment in NSW to check the credentials of the company delivering the work.
So far, more than 200 companies have been rated through an independent and rigorous process, which experts claim is giving consumers the power to choose wisely, for the first time ever, who builds their home.
“Consumers are now asking for iCIRT ratings when visiting display units,” says Karen Stiles, director of the Owners Corporation Network of Australia. “And savvy real
estate agents are now focused on marketing rated developments.”
Fabrizo Perilli, the NSW president of the Property Council of Australia, calls iCIRT a “catalyst for change” in the multi-residential property industry.
“We are yet to see consumer confidence and the purchasing of apartments return to pre-COVID levels, however we anticipate this to improve as more and more developers and builders adopt the iCIRT rating,” he says.
“In the current market, trust, transparency and certainty are paramount for buyers and investors.” Perilli adds it’s also an effective way for developers and builders to differentiate themselves from their peers when communicating to purchasers who are rightly seeking an additional layer of certainty and peace of mind.
NSW chapter president of the Australian Institute of Architects, Adam Haddow, says Chandler’s cleaning up of the industry benefits not only consumers, but all elements involved in the building process.
“From an architect’s point of view, the checks and balances that Chandler has been able to put in has reigned in some of the challenges we felt with the construction of apartments,” the director of architecture firm SJB says. “Before Chandler came in, a lot of things like materials could be swapped out during the construction process and we had little control.
“He brought in more constraints over what can be changed, so you just can’t swap brickwork for aluminium, for example. Most new apartments in NSW are sold off the
“plan and consumers commit to buying an apartment on the info provided during the marketing phase. Now there’s more consumer confidence that they will get the product they committed to.”
While Chandler’s four-year role was due to expire in August, the Minns Government has encouraged him to stay on until the new Building Commission is established by the end of 2023.
The Building Commission was a Minns election promise to ensure quality building and an increase of supply to stem the ongoing housing crisis that has dominated public debate in recent months.
Despite the positive changes, Mann says the apartment sector is “in turmoil” in terms of supply. At its peak in 2018/19 new apartment builds represented almost half of all new housing stock, delivering around $33,000 apartments a year. Mann says that number is down to around 10,000, highlighting a crisis in housing shortage.
“We have a whole lot of economic challenges,” he says.
“There has been layer upon layer of challenges, through the COVID years, the financing of these big projects and construction costs have become more difficult.
“But with the deep affordability challenge we’ve got, apartments must be the big future, it has to be.”
President of the Strata Community Association of NSW, Stephen Brell, agrees.
“The government has predicted NSW needs 30,000 strata lots per year just to keep pace with current demand and given that we are falling behind, that is a challenge for the government and for the planners,” Brell says.
“With affordability, in Sydney in particular, being very expensive the Minns Government has a focus on medium-density living, particularly around the major transport hubs of Sydney. As Sydney is bounded by national parks to the north and south, mountains to the west and the ocean to the east, the only way is to go up.”
Brell adds the future of the apartment sector in NSW looks bright because Chandler is not only looking to improve the quality of new builds, but also to maintain the existing stock.
“By 2030, 60 percent of strata schemes will be more than 30 years old so we need to focus attention on existing buildings, of properly maintaining them,” Brell says.
“We have to make the industry resilient going into the future.”
From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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