Construction has stopped on your unit: first steps
Establish the facts before acting: whether work has stopped or slowed, for how long, and across the whole site or part of it. Then read the delay and termination clauses, put your questions in writing, and take local advice before any long-stop date passes.
First, establish what has actually happened
Stopped and slowed look identical from a distance and lead to different decisions. So does a site paused for a permit, a site paused for a season, and a site paused because the contractor has not been paid.
Get somebody to look, on a stated date, and record what is there: which trades are present, whether plant remains, whether materials are on site, and what has changed since the last known state. A dated record is also what any later claim will need.
Then read three things
- 01The delay clause: grace period, extension events, and who declares them.
- 02The long-stop date, and the notice you must give to preserve a remedy.
- 03The payment schedule: whether anything further falls due while the site is stopped.
Put the questions in writing
- What has caused the stoppage, and when did it begin.
- Whether an extension event is being claimed, and on what grounds.
- What the revised programme is, stage by stage, not as a single completion date.
- Whether the contractor remains engaged.
- What the current state of the unit account is, where one exists.
What not to do
Do not accelerate payments to help the developer restart. It is the single most common way buyers turn a recoverable position into an unrecoverable one, and it is usually proposed as cooperation.
Do not stop scheduled payments without advice either. On most contracts that is a default, and it can hand the developer a right to terminate against you while their own delay is still within the grace period.
Questions on this
How long is a normal pause?
Weeks, for permits, weather or a change of contractor. Months with no explanation and no visible mobilisation is a different situation and should be treated as one.
Should I join a buyer group?
Usually yes, for information and for shared legal cost. Treat what circulates in one as leads to verify rather than as facts, and do not let a group's collective decision substitute for advice on your own contract.
Is it too late to do anything?
Almost never at the point work stops. It becomes late once a long-stop date passes without the notice your contract requires, which is why the clauses come before the negotiation.
Read one before you buy one
The specimen shows the whole structure: status, what each payment was meant to buy, the forecast with its range, the photographic record and the limits of what was checked.