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Where to for the building industry?


red750

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More likely a result of "bubble" management - letting a business expand beyond the limits of expandability.

 

I wonder how many of these companies have failed because too much focus was placed on getting sales? The salespeople are paid for the number of signatures on the contract. A red hot salesperson can get way more orders than can be supplied. 

 

Obviously the failure of the supply chain is a factor. All over the world, timber in its various forms has become scarce and so the old Supply & Demand rule gets a workout. How much of our fit out material comes from China now? That emphasis on the "bottom line" - minimise costs to maximise profit - has left us without the manufacturing basis to be self-sufficient.

 

You and I know that, but try convincing the politicians, who for the most part are younger than us and haven't lived through the economic history of the 20th Century. The 60-year-old politician was a school kid through the 70's and the 80s was the decade of "business first"

In the United States, The "business-first" attitude of the Reagan administration perhaps led to some of the economic excesses and crises of the 1980s. Deregulation of the financial world (and the lack of enforcement of remaining federal regulations) led to disastrous results on Wall Street. The nation was rocked by a series of scandals marked by insider trading, where financiers use illegally obtained information to gain an unfair advantage over their competitors. In some instances, stockbrokers and investment bankers were breaking into the offices of coworkers and rivals to gain information. When the 1980s came to a close, some of the most successful businesspeople of the decade were proven to be criminals.

 

From 1980, China undertook a massive reappraisal of its place in the World. As a totalitarian State it was able to engage its people in a myriad of ways to drag themselves from being agrarian-reliant to industrially dominant. It played on the West's "bottom line"emphasis by providing manufacturing capacity at miniscule labour costs. The West fell for it and, after providing the modern manufacturing equipment needed to produce the products the West wanted saw the Chinese pull the equipment apart and improve on it, further reducing the cost of products, but widening the range of products made.

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On our reno, have finally engaged a builder. After some of the most horrendously expensive quotes without them doing an even high-level itemisation, IO have agreen and open book time and material basis, where we agreed that I will directly purchase the bigger supplies and he will provide the labour. and smaller supplies. I do trust this guy because if he stuff up, word will spread quickly amongst his client base.

 

At least I have an estimate.

 

 

 

 

Edited by Jerry_Atrick
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We old farts are of the lucky generation; I was even luckier to be able to build my own home, after our bank manager said I’d never get a loan on my single income.

Don’t be surprised when the current working generation lose enthusiasm for all the discounts we seniors are currently entitled to.

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I agree with oldK. As I am writing this from a shed with house-like interior, I reckon I know well what building can be done by oneself. And much cheaper...

We just built ourselves a holiday house but then sold out in SA and now live here in it.

Sorry to not have more sympathy for those poor clients of the gone bust builders.

A mate of mine got a quote for a carport and when he was not satisfied that the contractor would not go broke, he paid for all the materials himself and then owned them. Everybody, including the contractor, was happy with this deal.

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