“Tell them they’re dreaming,” said Mr Ellis, an engineer, who is about to leave his apartment for months of repairs estimated at $360,000, that he expects will climb before the job is completed.

A second Landmark penthouse apartment owner does not expect to return to her home until February after moving out in August so that builders could repair defective common property, including the roof, wall cladding and a large veranda, where the defects have caused extensive damage in her unit.

The apartments are two of a number where defects have not been addressed since shortly after the Landmark was completed in 2008. By the time it won a NSW Master Builders excellence in construction award in 2009 the first of two reports showed clear and significant defects. Landmark developer/builder Peter Durbin wound up his two companies behind the project after the Landmark’s 59 unit owners took legal action. 

The Sydney Opal apartment building saga that left 300 residents on the street on Christmas Eve because of defects, only months after the building’s completion, has highlighted major problems in NSW apartment building regulations and law, including the use of private certifiers by builders and developers.

But Mr Ellis said the NSW Government was fully aware of the long-standing nature of the problems because he had repeatedly raised the Landmark case with government ministers.

“The law is just a disgrace. We’ve been doing nothing but paying special levies to deal with defects from almost the day we moved in. People don’t want to talk about it in public because noone wants to admit their property is in trouble, and there’s enormous anger generated when people realise they have to pay these levies for work in other people’s units,” Mr Ellis said.

“What’s happened at the Opal building is happening in many other places, including the Landmark. It’s only because the Opal is a new building that suddenly there’s a real focus on it. But the problems in the Landmark have been going on for 10 years and we’re only now getting down to addressing it.”

In May, 2018 Lake Macquarie MP Jodie Harrison slammed the government over unit buyer protections in a speech to NSW Parliament citing the Landmark woes. 

A Landmark owner with a standard three bedroom, two bathroom, two car space unit has so far paid more than $17,000 in repair work costs for the building defect fund since 2017, in addition to regular quarterly fees to maintain the building and services. All 59 unit owners must pay the special levies, regardless of whether their units are affected by the common property defects.

Mr Ellis said he had paid about $30,000 in special levies since early 2018 because he has a large penthouse apartment, in addition to his regular quarterly fees.

The 59 unit owner’s special levies are required to pay rent for Mr Ellis and other unit owners forced to leave their units while work takes place, in addition to the cost of the works.

A unit owner who did not want to be identified said he was required to pay three lots of $1600 in special levies over a number of months in addition to standard fees of $1300 per quarter.

“What sticks in my craw is that the people responsible for this are not accountable and the government is doing nothing about that,” he said.

The woman unable to live in her penthouse unit since August, who did not want to be identified, said she had lived for years with walls that vibrated and major leaking because the roof and cladding were not built to Australian standards.

It was an enormous drain exacerbated by disputes among unit owners about the extent of damage.

“It’s an enormous shock when you realise that things have gone wrong and there’s nothing you can do about it but pay and pay for repairs,” she said.

A LakeGroupStrata spokesman said he was not authorised to comment on the Landmark. The strata committee did not respond to a request for comment.

Minister for Better Regulation Matt Kean said Labor “created this mess when it botched the privatisation of certifiers in 1998”, saying the Landmark residents moved into the building in 2008, after more than a decade of Labor government and three years before the party was swept from power.

Mr Kean said Ms Harrison needed to “explain why her party failed these residents”.

“They shouldn’t have to put up with people doing shoddy work on their homes and that’s why the Liberal National Coalition has taken strong action to repair the damage done while Labor was in power. It’s unacceptable for certifiers to sign off on buildings that aren’t fit to live in and aren’t what hardworking mums and dads paid for.”

Coalition Government reforms in 2018 include a strata building bond and inspections scheme requiring developers to lodge a bond that can be drawn on to repair defects “early in the building lifecycle”.

The government also increased penalties and enacted a code of conduct for certifiers.