sydney – Sydney property developer Bathla Group’s collapse has left thousands of Australian home buyers – who have paid deposits and are waiting for their off-the-plan homes to be built – in limbo.

Those caught up in Bathla’s crisis face a patchwork of outcomes.

They could potentially get their deposits back or eventually receive the keys to their new homes, depending on their contracts and what happens to individual projects. But if the company ultimately goes into liquidation, their chances of recovering the money will depend partly on how their deposits were held.

By law across Australian states, deposits for off-the-plan properties must be held in a trust account until settlement.

But Bathla’s administrators said some contracts stated that deposits could be used to fund projects, meaning some of the money is no longer sitting in those trust accounts, leaving buyers potentially exposed. A full reconciliation is still under way.

When asked about Bathla’s trust accounts, a spokesperson for the New South Wales government said it would take “appropriate action in the event the mismanagement of deposit funds is identified”.

Bathla’s credit crisis lays bare the pitfalls for off-the-plan buyers when corporate…