Western Sydney home builder Bathla Group has been placed into voluntary administration, leaving buyers, agents and contractors across its projects in limbo.
According to The Guardian, the family-owned company, founded in NSW in 1997, becomes the latest in a long line of Australian residential builders and developers to enter administration or liquidation amid soaring material costs, labour shortages and fixed-price contracts.
Founder and managing director Bhart Bhushan described the move as an “orderly restructure of business” and said the company had confronted what he called a “perfect storm” of conditions – a significant softening in sales, the impact of changes in the federal government’s May budget, falling confidence in key markets, and construction cost increases the company had absorbed itself.
“Our first thoughts are with our employees and the customers who have put their faith in us to deliver their dream of home ownership,” Bhart said in a statement on the Bathla website.
“It is my sincere hope this process can allow that to happen by working collaboratively with the administrators, our suppliers, contractors and lending partners.”
Bathla chief executive Robert Loader said the business had “been through a period of declining sales and falling property prices, while construction costs have increased”, according to news.com.au.
“We will work constructively with the administrators to support the continued delivery of much needed housing for Western Sydney,” he said.
The scale of the collapse is significant for a business built on affordable house-and-land packages, apartments and townhouses in growth corridors such as Schofields, Marsden Park and Tallawong.
News.com.au reported Bathla had roughly 15,000 properties under construction across Sydney’s west and had racked up more than $3 billion in debt, largely to private creditors, citing figures reported by The AFR that put related entity Universal Property’s debts at nearly $3.2 billion and Raj & Jai Construction’s liabilities at $304 million as of June 30, 2025.
Teneo has been appointed administrator of Bathla and its related entities, according to documents filed with ASIC.
Teneo’s head of financial advisory, Stephen Longley, said the firm’s priority was to keep projects moving.
“Our priority is to stabilise the business so that construction activity and property settlements can continue in the ordinary course,” Stephen said, as reported by news.com.au.
“Our objective is to ensure project continuity wherever practicable, and work with lenders to minimise disruption for employees, customers and contractors.”
Bathla’s active projects include developments in Pemulwuy, a 339-apartment build in Rouse Hill, and a housing estate in Muswellbrook it announced in July.
Bathla’s collapse adds to a run of construction industry failures in NSW, where 1,522 construction firms went under in the 2025/26 financial year, including Beechwood Homes, Novati Constructions and Built Lifestyles, according to Yahoo Finance.
In January, Bathla had publicly disputed “several inaccuracies” in media coverage of its lending relationships, saying at the time that a decision to refinance its loan portfolio was made for “sound commercial reasons” and that it “continues to attract interest from a broad range of financiers, reflecting confidence in our track record, land holdings, and development pipeline”.
This story draws on The Guardian, news.com.au, Yahoo Finance Australia and AFR.