What Does the Queensland Home Warranty Scheme Actually Cover?

The Queensland Home Warranty Scheme is statutory insurance run by the Queensland Building and Construction Commission that protects you in three situations: your builder does not finish the job, your builder does not fix defective work, or the building suffers subsidence or settlement. QBCC requires cover on most residential building work valued at more than $3,300 including materials, labour and GST. Your builder must take the cover out and pay the premium to QBCC on your behalf, but the money comes from you, usually inside the deposit. Structural defects are covered for 6 years 6 months from the cover commencement day; non-structural defects get a much shorter window tied to completion. It is not home and contents insurance, and it is no substitute for a builder who turns up and fixes things.

The scheme at a glance

Every figure below comes from QBCC’s own published pages. These are the numbers worth writing down before you sign anything.

What work triggers the $3,300 threshold?

QBCC states that most residential building work in Queensland valued at more than $3,300 — including materials, labour and GST — must have cover. That catches far more than new houses. QBCC’s list runs to building, extending, altering, renovating and repairing residential structures, replacing or refitting kitchen and bathroom fixtures, window and door work, decks and verandahs, structural modifications, swimming pools, roof restoration and repairs, and water supply, drainage, sewerage and stormwater work. A typical Coolum or Noosa bathroom refit is squarely inside the scheme.

Associated work is treated differently. QBCC says driveways, paths and roads, fences, air conditioning, hot water systems, security doors and grilles and landscaping are covered for non-completion only, not for defective work. If your builder walks off mid-job the scheme can help finish the driveway; it will not chase a landscaping defect years later.

QBCC also lists what sits outside the scheme entirely: projects costing less than $3,300 including materials, labour and GST, commercial building work, work done by unlicensed contractors, owner-builder work, multiple-unit dwellings of more than three storeys above a car park, and boarding houses, hostels, guest houses, backpackers accommodation, hotels, caravan parks, schools, hospitals, retirement villages and mixed residential-commercial construction. Read the unlicensed line twice. An unlicensed contractor puts your work outside the scheme altogether, which is why you check a QBCC licence before you pay a deposit, and why the wider vetting in our guide on how to choose a builder in Queensland is worth the hour it takes.

Who pays the premium, and when

QBCC is unambiguous. The licensed contractor who contracts with the homeowner — the principal contractor — must collect the premium from the owner and pay it to QBCC on the owner’s behalf, and QBCC says the premium should be included as part of any deposit collected, within the deposit limits set by law. It must be paid before the earlier of two events: before work starts, or within 10 business days of signing the contract. Once it is paid, QBCC sends a Notice of Cover to both the contractor and the homeowner, along with a tax invoice and a link to its product disclosure booklet. That Notice is your receipt for the whole scheme, so if site works have begun and nothing has landed in your inbox, ask the question that week rather than a year later.

The premium is not a flat fee. QBCC calculates it on the insurable value of the work — materials, labour and GST, and it expressly excludes the QBCC premium itself — picking up associated work in the contract such as landscaping, driveways, fences, pool fences, retaining walls, air conditioning, hot water systems and security doors. Where residential construction work is valued at $150,000 or more excluding GST the QLeave levy enters the sum, and QBCC says the cost of each premium or levy must be included when calculating the other. The dollar figure comes off QBCC’s published premium tables, so the honest answer to “what will it cost” is that it scales with your insurable value. Ask your builder to show you the line.

How long the cover actually lasts

There are two clocks, and they run very differently. For structural defects, QBCC covers the work for 6 years 6 months from the cover commencement day — the earliest of the day the premium is paid, the day you agree to a contract, or the day work starts — and notes the period may be extended if the work takes longer than six months to complete. You must first become aware of the defect inside that 6 years 6 months, and claim within 3 months after the day you first become aware of it. For non-structural defects the window is short: QBCC requires you to first become aware within 6 months after the day the work is substantially complete, and to claim within 7 months after that same date.

QBCC defines structural defective building work as work that is faulty or unsatisfactory because it adversely affects the structural performance of a building, adversely affects the health or safety of persons residing in or occupying it, adversely affects its functional use, or allows water penetration into the building. Non-structural defective building work is work that does not meet a reasonable standard of construction or finish expected of a competent holder of a contractor’s licence of the relevant class, or that has caused a settling in period defect in a new building.

The practical lesson: walk the house properly in the first months after handover and write everything down, because cornice cracking, sticking doors and tiling finish are the non-structural items that fall off a cliff at the seven-month mark. Our guide to defects liability and warranty in Queensland explains how this sits alongside your contract warranties.

What the scheme pays for, and what it will not

QBCC describes three heads of cover: non-completion, where your contractor does not or cannot finish the work; defective work, where your contractor does not fix defects; and subsidence or settlement. Once a non-completion claim is accepted, cover extends to fire, storm, vandalism or theft damage to the incomplete work. The limits are real. QBCC sets a maximum of $200,000 for each category of loss, including a maximum of $5,000 for alternative accommodation, removal and storage costs. Optional additional cover lifts those to $300,000 and $10,000, but you must apply before the earlier of 30 business days after signing the contract, or before work starts, and once that window closes it cannot be bought. On a build where the contract sum sits well above $200,000 — and many do, as our guide on the cost to build a house on the Sunshine Coast shows — that is a cheap decision made early and an impossible one made late.

Two exclusions surprise people. QBCC states plainly that the scheme is not home and contents insurance. And cost-plus contracts are covered only for defective work claims, not non-completion, because QBCC says settling a non-completion claim requires knowing the agreed price to finish the work and a cost-plus contract has no certainty about the final price. That is one more reason to understand what you are signing — see fixed price building contracts in QLD. QBCC also notes that once it pays out on a claim, it tries to recover the amount from the contractor.

How a claim actually works

You cannot go straight to the insurance. QBCC requires you to notify the contractor in writing of every defective or unfinished item and give a reasonable opportunity for the items to be rectified, unless the contractor is bankrupt, in liquidation, deregistered or deceased; QBCC says the notice must give a timeframe, for example 14 days. If that does not resolve it, you lodge a defective work or non-completion complaint and take part in QBCC’s dispute resolution process. A resolution services officer assesses the complaint and contacts both parties, an on-site meeting is usually arranged to review each item and agree a plan for repair, and if items remain unresolved a QBCC building inspector carries out a visual inspection. Where defective work is identified QBCC may issue a Direction to Rectify, which in most cases sets a rectification period of 35 days, and QBCC records each Direction as complied or not complied on the licensee’s public record.

How this looks on a Roebuck Concepts job

We work across the Sunshine Coast and Noosa Shire from one office at Unit 1/18 Lomandra Place, Coolum Beach. Roebuck Concepts holds QBCC licence 15280811 and Tom Roebuck holds individual QBCC licence 15015060, so every job we contract sits inside the scheme where the value requires it. Cover is taken out within QBCC’s timing rule, and the Notice of Cover reaches you from QBCC rather than from us — which is exactly right, because your protection should not depend on our paperwork. We are a member of Master Builders Queensland, and our Grandview project at Coolum Beach won three Master Builders Queensland 2025 Sunshine Coast Housing & Construction Awards, presented on 15 August 2025 at The Events Centre, Caloundra. You can see how we run a job on our process page, and read more about the business on our about page.