Melbourne homebuilder Langford Jones Homes enters liquidation owing $10m to creditors

Customers of Langford Jones Homes have been left in limbo after the Melbourne-based homebuilder joined the raft of high-profile construction industry collapses last week, with a cyber attack just one of many reasons behind the company’s demise.

Jonathon Colbran and Richard Stone Partners (RSM) were appointed on 30 June as joint and several liquidators to Langford Jones Homes, which has been building custom-designed residential homes for more than 48 years in Melbourne’s bayside, south eastern suburbs and the Bass Coast.

According to RSM partner Colbran, a “perfect storm” of rising costs and external factors out of the company’s control led to the collapse of Langford Jones Homes, which was founded by Bruce Langford-Jones in 1975.

“The company recently experienced a significant cyber-attack, higher costs for labour, supplies and materials, supply chain delays and skilled labour shortage and all of this has resulted in substantial financial losses to the business,” Colbran said.

“This perfect storm of supply and labour shortages and high costs are a common theme across the building and construction industry at the moment and unfortunately, it’s become unsustainable for Langford Jones.

“Our task now is to coordinate the handover of the building projects to the homeowners and look to realise the value of any business assets.”

The company ceased trading on appointment of liquidators, leaving 65 building projects in the lurch at various stages of completion with more than 250 creditors who are owed more than $10 million.

The homebuilder notes that attempts were made to rescue the company by shareholders injecting additional funds into Langford Jones Homes, but the situation was ultimately “untenable”.

The collapse is the latest in a string of property and construction industry failures in recent months, including the Australian arm of property and construction firm Wilson Bayly Holmes - Ovocon (WBHO) which owned big names in the industry like Probuild, Monaco Hickey and WBHO Infrastructure.

A number of other large Australian construction firms have also recently met their maker including boutique investment firm REMI Capital, Gold Coast builders Pivotal Homes and Condev Construction, Sydney developer Next.