A Sharia-compliant building company behind a controversial housing estate in north-west Sydney where the streets were named after Pakistani cities has collapsed.
Qartaba Homes, which offered interest-free loans in order to be compliant with Islamic law and billed itself as a “Halal-friendly housing solution” was forced into liquidation in the New South Wales Supreme Court last month with debts of more than $200 million, The Australian reported.
The Pakistani Muslim-run developers’ flagship project was at Riverstone, where streets near the local mosque – also mortgaged by Qartaba – were named Karachi, Lahore, Quetta and Multan in 2017. The company then boasted about the achievement on social media.
The development was opposed by locals who feared as far back as 2013 – before the street names were confirmed – that the Riverstone new-build estate would become a Muslim-only area, and objected to the interest-free loans given to Islamic buyers.
“If we allow this type of housing development to go ahead in a small, quiet, close-knit community such as Riverstone/Schofields, then we are just opening the door to trouble,” one Riverstone resident warned at the time. “We need to think about the future of the area, the people who have lived and raised families [here] all their lives.”
The City of Blacktown Council earlier this year refused to tell Noticer News why the street names were approved.
Qartaba avoided charging interest by first buying the land, then selling off-the-plan to buyers who were required to pay a deposit followed by interest-free periodic development cost or land payments.
The company then mortgaged the land it had sold to its customers and took out high-interest loans despite targeting customers who were religiously opposed to the practice. The land will now be sold off by liquidators to pay Qartaba’s debts.
The collapse has left hundreds of mainly south Asian Muslim immigrants out-of-pocket, with one describing the situation as “un-Australian”. Many had already paid for their houses in full, but their lots were not transferred into their names or were never developed.
Mhabubullah Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi immigrant Qartaba customer asked: “How could this happen in Australia?”
Another customer said the government was more to blame for the situation then Qartaba, saying they only trusted the developer because they thought they were “safe” in Australia. Others blamed lack of regulation for allowing Qartaba’s creditors to give high loans despite its unusual business model.
Qartaba had hundreds of lots in Victoria, Queensland and other parts of New South Wales in addition to the Riverstone project.
When Noticer News visited the north-west Sydney suburb in April many of the tradesmen working on houses near the mosque were of Pakistani or Indian appearance, as were most of the real estate agents on the street signage.
At the time of the 2021 Census Riverstone had a population of 8,627. 65.9% were born in Australia, 6.8% in India and 1.5% in Pakistan.
A comparison to earlier surveys is impossible due to boundary changes, but the Blacktown local government area went from 61.4% Australian-born in 2001 to 50.4% in 2021, and saw a population increase of 141,000 people.
