David Chandler, the man who cleaned up NSW’s building industry as the state’s inaugural Building Commissioner, says he’s ready to come out of retirement, this time to tackle housing affordability with a plan he admits is “intentionally disruptive.”

Chandler’s four years in the role from 2019 left it’s mark on the sector with a star rating for developers, the return of insurance cover for new blocks, the shutting down of work sites that were going to produce sub-standard buildings and, controversially, a resolution of the benighted Mascot Towers dilemma where owners were left with unsellable units in a crumbling building.

With that proven track record, Chandler is now pitching for an encore. As the Sydney Morning Herald’s Max Maddison reports, he’s told the paper he’d put his hand up to run a new scheme called MM3, aimed at delivering thousands of affordable apartments the market currently won’t build, but only if the Minns government actually adopts the proposal.

The idea is to use small and medium-sized builders – the kind looking to move up from house-and-land packages into apartment blocks of six to 24 units – to deliver stock priced under $1 million, a segment Chandler argues has effectively vanished under current market conditions (“absolute market failure,” in his words).

By using government-approved “pattern book” designs repeated 50 or 60 times, he says building costs could fall by at least 20 per cent, with a typical 85 square metre two-bedroom unit costing around $350,000 to $400,000 to build and land capped at no more than $500,000 per dwelling. Because government would acquire the land, developers wouldn’t need to claw back the usual profit margin.

There’s a consumer protection thread here too, one that will sound familiar to Flat Chat readers: MM3 would have government provide a completion guarantee, removing the risk of buyers being left exposed if a builder collapses mid-project.

It’s worth remembering what’s on Chandler’s CV. He was the driving force behind iCIRT, the Independent Construction Industry Rating Tool developed with Equifax, which pulls together data on developers’ character, capability and capital to give buyers and financiers a way of telling good operators from bad ones before they sign a contract.

He also spent years pushing for decennial liability insurance – 10-year, “first resort” cover for a building’s structure, fire safety and waterproofing that lets owners claim as soon as a defect turns up, rather than having to prove fault and chase a builder through the courts.

That campaign has just paid off: NSW Parliament passed the Fair Trading and Building Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 on 4 August, letting developers meet their statutory bond obligation with an approved decennial-style policy instead of the old two-year strata bond, making NSW the third Australian jurisdiction – after the ACT and Victoria – to legislate for it.

His solution for Mascot Towers saw government, mortgage lenders and owners reach a compromise that shared the pain from the negative equitty in uninhabitable units in the crumbling building. And he gained notoriety for shutting down developments when they were clearly not reaching basic standards that would miminise the number of defects inherited by apartment purchasers.

Chandler’s ambition, as outlined to the SMH, is 4000 new units within three years, run out of a program office inside an existing government department, with a five-to-seven-year lifespan intended to hand the model to the private sector once proven. He told the Herald the job needs the same “unambiguous mandate” he had when first brought in to fix the building sector, and that he’d be happy to compete for the role against anyone with a similar track record.

A spokeswoman for Planning Minister Paul Scully told the SMH that the government “welcomes any proposal that helps build more homes and innovative approaches by the private sector”: short of a commitment, but not a knock-back either.

Chandler is also due to give evidence at the ICAC’s Operation Rosny hearing, where it’s previously been revealed Liberal operatives plotted to have him dismissed as commissioner. He’s not a target of that inquiry, and declined to tell the Herald what he plans to say.