The proposals of the NSW government in its recent Building Stronger Foundations discussion paper to take a “zero-tolerance” approach to non-compliant certifiers, ensure ‘building professionals’ are registered (always assuming anyone will insure them) and appointing a Building Commissioner, all sound good in theory but may prove more difficult to implement in practice without significant resourcing and real teeth. Calls to bring back suitably qualified and independent Clerks of Work or consulting architects or engineers to oversee a development from start to finish may offer an alternative solution.

Missing from current debates has been the key role the finance sector has played in requiring pre-sales before developers can access development finance. This marketing approach lays the seeds of much of what subsequently happens. In buying “off-the-plan”, the buyer is committing to buy an apartment on the basis of very limited information about what will actually be built – often little more than that contained in a glossy brochure. Would you buy a new car under similar conditions? Of course not.

“Information asymmetry” in favour of the developer is a fundamental feature of the apartment market and a clear sign of market failure. Even for purchasers of existing apartments, it is often very difficult to obtain clear, comprehensive or reliable information about the state of the building. Nor is it feasible to have an entire high-rise inspected before settling on a purchase and yet apartment owners are entering, largely blindly, into joint ownership of these often massive and complex buildings, based on little else but trust in a system that has now been shown to have failed dismally.

The lowly position of the consumer in the process was graphically exposed last week. In the list of the government ministers and industry heavyweights who attended the Building Ministers Forum, there was no one representing the most important stakeholder of all – apartment owners. Neither were strata managers nor strata solicitors at the table. It is indicative of the whole shambles that those who are left to pick up the bill and deal with the consequences are not included as part of the solution.

What’s needed is a wholesale revamp of the culture of the apartment development industry that puts the needs of the consumer first, not a distant last. The industry needs to embrace a culture of change or face a continued crisis of trust.

There’s a lot resting on getting this right, not least the capacity of Sydney to accommodate the 8 million people it’s expected to house by 2056. We can only hope the development industry takes ownership of its failings and, with the help of the proposed reforms, puts its house – or perhaps its apartment – in order.