We're at the start process of doing a knock down rebuild in Sydney and have been talking to a large project builder whose name starts with M.
Already have committed money to get a site survey and soil test and are now talking through a few structural changes that we want included.
The builder's salesman is very hard to pin down on final costs with them stating we need to sign the contract and then they'll allow us to select types of bricks, taps, tiles, door handles etc.
which is a huge unknown, they seem very keen on un upselling everything with a "don't worry about that" attitude.
Basically we need a firm price on the tender to get finance as will be going for a construction loan.
When we told the salesman we need firm prices and we weren't going to sign anything until they had all parts of the build costed it was "but this is the way we do things, everybody else seems happy"
As this is the first time we have done anything like this are all builders like this,
we realise there are will be variations due to site conditions but to sign a contract "blind" to the final easily quantifiable costs seems stupid.