Four Corners investigates Australia's apartment building crisis from shoddy workmanship to lax laws leaving owners out of pocket and in some cases out of a home altogether.

For 20 years the nation's city skylines have been changing with the building of more than 650,000 apartments across the country.

Glossy advertising has wooed buyers away from the traditional Aussie dream of a house with promises of sophisticated apartment living and highend finishes. But the shine has well and truly come off the apartment property boom.

The emergency evacuation of two residential apartment blocks this year has blown open the industry's secret buildings riddled with defects.

Four Corners will take you inside buildings and apartments in multiple cities to show how entrenched the problems are.

Inside the industry are now speaking out about how this crisis has been allowed to happen. What they reveal is a litany of failure, to regulate and protect the buying public, even in the face of repeated warnings.

Those who know the scale of the problem warn that while new laws may prevent future problems, the legacy of the last 20 years will be with us for decades to come.

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