29/09/2026
We all know there is a massive undersupply of housing, and we are not reaching the governments own goals for housing construction.
For years the industry blamed planning. Councils, rezoning, assessment times. Those problems have not vanished, but they are no longer solely what is holding the numbers back.
Two constraints matter now. The first is people. Workforce shortages across construction are projected to reach 300,000 by mid 2027, and no single business fixes that. (Ref: https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/reports/2025-infrastructure-market-capacity-report)
The second is money. Not profit, and not pricing. Working capital, which is the cash you need in the bank to carry a job from slab to handover.
That second one is a business problem rather than an industry problem. It is the one that closes companies, and it is the one your accountant can actually do something about. So that is where we will spend the rest of this article.
What one $500,000 build does to a builder’s bank account
Take a single job. A $500,000 domestic contract, 25 weeks, on the standard QBCC stage schedule.
You take a deposit at the start. Queensland law caps it at 5 per cent for a level 2 contract, so $25,000. That money is gone inside the first week of site works.
From there the pattern repeats. You fund a stage, you claim it, the payment pulls you back toward the line, and then the next stage drags you under again. Base, frame, enclosed, fixing, final.
The deepest point comes at week 17. That is three quarters of the way through, when the house looks nearly finished and the job feels safe. It is not. You have just funded the entire enclosed stage, the roof, the windows, the brickwork, the most material heavy phase of the build, and you have not claimed a dollar of it yet.
The chart shows two lines for a reason. The dashed one is the job on its own, which finishes at $100,000. The solid one is what actually happens to your bank account, because your overheads keep running whether you are claiming or not. Office, insurance, vehicles, software, admin wages and your own wage cost roughly $3,000 every week of that build.
Follow the solid line and the job resolves at $25,000, not $100,000. The gap between those two numbers is the single most misread figure in residential building.
