Nicheliving building crisis<\/a> after the company took years longer than promised to complete their homes.<\/p>\nIt ended late last year when the state government reached an agreement with Nicheliving directors Ronnie Michel-Elhaj and Paul Bitdorf to surrender their building licence.<\/p>\n
In return, customers with incomplete homes would be allowed to access building indemnity insurance payments of $200,000 to complete their homes.<\/p>\n
![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/7a36a6ba0a102761448c7e2aa69087b4\")
<\/p>\n
Some of the mould growing in Kathy Ellis’s house. (Supplied: Kathy Ellis)<\/p>\n
Inspections have since revealed that the appropriate plumbing pipe was not installed in Ms Ellis’s house.<\/p>\n
“They’ve actually used communications PVC pipe and none of the joins are glued together,” Ms Ellis told Nadia Mitsopoulos on ABC Radio Perth.<\/p>\n
A full inspection by the regulator, Building and Energy, has revealed 10 breaches by the plumber Nicheliving appointed to do the work.<\/p>\n
The report reveals that some pipes are flowing in the wrong direction, the size of the connections is wrong, pipes are at incorrect angles, and pipe joints are not watertight.<\/p>\n
“It’s on the severe side of serious. The inspectors that came out spent many hours at my house looking over it, and they said that even they were surprised at how many breaches they found just in one house,” she said.<\/p>\n
“I currently have no ceilings in the living area of my house. One bathroom, we can’t use at all.<\/p>\n
“The other bathroom we can use, but we have to have very quick showers.<\/p>\n
“Luckily, when the ceilings fell down \u2026 all the mould got taken outside in that area.”Plumber ordered to fix work<\/p>\n
Building and Energy have now issued a rectification order to the plumber who did the work.<\/p>\n
“He has the option not to do as ordered, but then I’m presuming the plumber’s licensing board will have a lot to say about that if he doesn’t,” Ms Ellis said.<\/p>\n
If he does come back and repair the plumbing, Ms Ellis will still have to cover the cost of the damage caused to other parts of the house herself.<\/p>\n
She said the indemnity payment would cover some of the estimated $60,000 cost, but she will have to pay out around $20,000 herself.<\/p>\n
![\"Black](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/0b160d34f43b325fd444b73be4292fb4\")
<\/p>\n
Black mould is blooming in a cornice at Kathy Ellis’s new house. (Supplied: Kathy Ellis)<\/p>\n
‘A terrible period of life’<\/p>\n
Peter Bentley went through a similar experience with Nicheliving and eventually had his house completed by another builder.<\/p>\n
“Our second builder went through our Niche build and managed to find all the problems and rectify them before we finished the build, which was great, but very expensive,” he said.<\/p>\n
“There was multiple, problems, embarrassing building problems, including having to replace the roof.<\/p>\n
“The plumbing and brickwork were terrible.”<\/p>\n
Nicheliving loses legal authority to complete home builds<\/a><\/p>\nA Perth home builder with scores of unfinished projects on the books is no longer able to legally undertake construction works.<\/p>\n
The house was finished three years past the original completion date.<\/p>\n
Mr Bentley said his family eventually moved into the finished house for a short period before selling it.<\/p>\n
“We were just so disturbed by the entire process. So we’ve sold it and moved on.<\/p>\n
“We’re not suffering as a result of any of this, compared to others<\/p>\n
“Nonetheless, it was a terrible period of life for us and for a whole lot of other people.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After spending three years living in a caravan with her two children, Nicheliving customer Kathy Ellis thought her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18034,9098,9097,64,63,22674,133546,99,25273,1481,133547,25269,133545,133548,133551,133550,133549,11814],"class_list":["post-218764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-18034","tag-720-perth","tag-abc-radio-perth","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-building","tag-building-and-energy","tag-business","tag-damage","tag-house","tag-kathy-ellis","tag-mould","tag-nicheliving","tag-paul-bitdorf","tag-pipes","tag-plumbing","tag-ronnie-michel-elhaj","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}