From working on Victorian and NSW combustible cladding building projects I can safely say that Victoria has adopted a more proactive approach than NSW. There are bold claims made by the NSW Building Commissioner in reference to Project Remediate when it could really be renamed Project Reclad based on what I’ve seen coming out of the investigation reporting phase and what is being done at the design stage. Fire experts aren’t even a significant part of the design process, or really at all in some cases, and facade engineers are being asked to sign-off on suspect and questionable existing construction details that don’t meet compliance. Very odd for a project that is all about fire safety compliance. But, to be fair, we had fires in Victoria that may have spurred things on for the State Government to react more decisively.
In terms of buying an apartment building as an investment I would lean towards Victoria over NSW as it seems to have faired better with the defects coming out of the latest construction boom. Again, to be fair, NSW probably felt the construction boom the hardest. So, the comparisons are probably not that straightforward to make unless you have access to reliable data held by the respective regulatory authorities of the relevant states.
Though some of NSW’s bigger structural failures in recent years are less likely to occur in Victoria due to tighter peer review processes. NSW seems to be very late to fixing their game, and it may even be too late for a lot of owners. It does not seem likely that the fallout from the construction boom has been realised yet.