Domestic Building Dispute Lawyers in Melbourne

The law is on your side, if you use it properly

Your renovation has stalled, the plaster is staining, or the builder wants money for work you never agreed to. You are in a stronger position than it feels like from where you are standing. Almost every home build, extension and renovation in Victoria sits under the Domestic Building Contracts Act, and the Act was written to protect you.

It requires a written contract for domestic building work over $10,000, and gives you a cooling-off period of five business days after you receive the signed contract. It also bakes statutory warranties into your contract whether the builder likes it or not: the work must be carried out with care and skill, with suitable materials, in line with the plans and the law, and fit for its purpose. Those warranties last ten years and follow the house rather than the owner. Because they sit inside the contract itself, work that falls short of them can be pursued as a breach of contract as readily as a building defect.

If any of that sounds like your situation, call MK Law on 1800 130 120 before you fire off another angry email. The first call is free, and what you write to the builder this week can decide the case.

Defects are proved with evidence gathered early

Dated photographs, the signed contract, every email and text, and an independent building inspection report: that is the file that wins a defect claim. We arrange the right expert for the defect you have, plead the statutory warranties properly, and price the rectification so the claim asks for the right number. Owners who build the file before the builder leaves site tend to settle faster and for more.

Get your claim assessed

Conciliation comes first, and how you get there matters

You cannot go straight to VCAT with most domestic building disputes. The government conciliation service, formerly Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria (DBDRV) and now run by the Building and Plumbing Commission, screens them first. It is free, and before it accepts your application you must show you took reasonable steps to resolve things directly with the builder, in writing.

That first letter is worth doing well. We draft it so it gives the builder a genuine chance to fix the work, puts the statutory warranties on the record, and reads properly when a conciliator or tribunal member sees it later. If conciliation resolves the dispute, you are done cheaply. If it fails, the service certifies the matter and the certificate opens the door to VCAT’s Building and Property List. Plan on around a year to reach a final hearing there: complex defect claims with expert evidence run longer, and many matters settle earlier at a compulsory conference.

The ten-year clock does not bend

Victorian law puts a hard ten-year limit on building actions, counted from the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection. It applies to contract and negligence claims alike, and there is no exception for defects that stayed hidden. If your home is in year eight or nine, treat this as urgent.

Builder insurance changed on 1 July 2026

If your contract was signed from 1 July 2026 and your home is three storeys or less, the new first-resort Home Warranty Scheme applies. The Building and Plumbing Commission insures work over $20,000 up to $400,000, and you can claim for incomplete, defective or non-compliant work straight away.

Older policies stay under the last-resort rules: cover up to $300,000 for work over $16,000, and you can only claim once the builder has died, disappeared or become insolvent. If your builder has collapsed mid-build, that policy plus our builder liquidation team is usually your path to recovery. Either way, notification deadlines are tight, so do not sit on the letter.

What we do on your file

We act for owners, and for builders defending claims, across building disputes of every size. On a typical owner file we review the contract and the paper trail, brief the building inspector, run the conciliation process, and take the matter into VCAT’s Domestic Building List if conciliation fails. You know what each stage involves before it starts, and nothing moves without your say-so.

Not every home file is about workmanship. When an excavation cracks the neighbour’s wall or WorkSafe shuts the site down, the construction accident questions of indemnity and insurance sit alongside the building claim, and we run the two together.

Call 1800 130 120 or use the form on this page. If you just want to understand the process first, our building disputes guide walks through it step by step.