A collapsed building firm owes nearly $4 million to creditors and almost half of that is money staff members have missed out on.
Earlier this month, news.com.au reported that DC Living Pty Ltd, trading under the names Living Homes VIC and Living Homes QLD, had gone into administration.
The builder, headquartered in Brisbane, had undertaken more than $10 million worth of construction work since July and had at least 29 active sites on its books, according to the Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC).
The appointed administrators, Daniel Quinn and David Stimpson of insolvency firm SV Partners, informed creditors that DC Living had ceased trading and the QBCC has since cancelled its building licence.
They have now released a report to creditors, obtained by news.com.au, which shows the business has hefty debts to both trade suppliers and staff.
A sign reading “pay up ya flog” has adorned the site of at least one DC Living build that news.com.au knows of.
DC Living owes $1.171 million in unpaid wages to workers, and a further $155,000 in superannuation.
The tax office is also owed $413,000 in PAYG and GST.
On top of that, trade suppliers are owed $2.229 million in unpaid invoices.
The company has assets worth only an estimated $46,000.
That comes in at a grand total of $3.8 million owed.
Creditors include trade suppliers, staff, the tax department, landlords, utilities companies, vehicle companies for leases and personal loans from the directors.
News.com.au counted 75 trade creditors owed money.
News.com.au previously reported that when DC Living went under, tradies rushed to the build sites to collect their skip bins and fencing.
One customer, Jamie*, who preferred not to share his last name, said his site had been stripped bare as a result.
“Basically we found out on the Friday that they (DC Living) had gone under,” Jamie told news.com.au. “We were like ‘Oh my god’.”
That weekend, the tradies came and took their stuff back from his site, leaving some rubbish behind in the process.
News.com.au understands other customers have had a similar experience.
Do you know more or have a similar story? Get in touch | alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au
Ashton Close, a tradie who has been left $26,775 out of pocket over the debacle, said “it’s a disgrace”.
The brick renderer estimates that he’s worked at 133 sites in total during the four-year period that his business did work for DC Living.
“They’ve dragged the chain on paying us, they’ve said they need an extra couple of weeks,” Mr Close told news.com.au.
“Before Christmas we were just getting the run-around.
“They’ve stung us about $26,000. It hurts, it definitely hurts.”
According to the QBCC, DC Living’s record of residential construction work shows that it had 29 jobs in the state during the 2023/2024 financial period.
That came in at a total value of $10,224,965 worth of construction projects.
DC Living’s pipeline of work peaked in the 2020/21 reporting period.
The builder took on 87 jobs worth $31 million, which coincided with the government’s announcement of the HomeBuilder grant.
The following year, it had 76 construction projects on its books.
ASIC records show that Hugh Bridle and Angelo Augostis are co-directors of DC Living.
In a video on LinkedIn from a year ago, one of the directors, Mr Augostis, assured clients that DC Living was solvent, as seen in the video holder above.
“To be completely honest, DC Living is a financially viable business,” he said in a video from late 2022.
“We have consistently paid our suppliers on a fortnightly basis and will continue to do so for many moons to come.”
News.com.au attempted to contact the company for comment but the number was blocked.
As well as DC Living Pty Ltd, two other companies involved in the business group also collapsed on the same day.
Kalkamoning Pty Ltd and DC Living Administration Pty Ltd both appointed Daniel Quinn and David Stimpson as the liquidators.
“The companies operate within a group structure, whereby DC Living Pty Ltd is the main trading entity, DC Living Administration Pty Ltd is the main employing entity and Kalkamoning Pty Ltd is the previous trading entity,” the liquidators wrote.
The brickie, Ashton Close told news.com.au that his records showed he had worked on 29 build sites for Kalkamoning Pty Ltd during the four-year period he did contract work for them.
A statutory report on Kalkamoning Pty Ltd, sent out earlier this month and obtained by news.com.au, said that three active builds had been impacted from its collapse.
There are 49 unsecured creditors owed $624,000.
Of that, $42,000 owed to the tax office while $487,000 is owed to trade creditors.
alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au
