Hi all,

So my boyfriend and I have put an offer on some land, which has been accepted and now we have started looking into all different builders. At the moment we are looking at Homebuyers Centre, Wow Homes, RedInk and Celebration homes. I have only just started contacting the builders to see if they will build in our area and what kind of house we can fit on our block.

Does anyone have any advice about these builders or recommendations about other builders?
I'd love to get opinions and different perspectives.

We are looking to build a 3 x 2 home on 300sqm. Our block is survey strata and has 13m frontage.

Any information you think would be helpful for me to know please feel free to share.
Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you

Welcome! And good luck with the next part. Where are you building?

We are also building on a 300m2 block, ours has a 10m frontage. We're building with Aussie. It was the sales guy that sold us on them and after looking around they probably had the best plan for our block.

It's had it's ups and downs but our slab was laid Wednesday and we are hoping all goes well from here in.

Ask about inclusions and upgrades early as they add up quickly!

Thanks fmac! I have actually been looking at your thread because your block is the same size as ours and because your plans seems pretty close to what we were looking for. We don't want anything flashy with 3 extra activity rooms coz it's just the two of us and our dog. We dont plan to have kids anytime soon so we want to build what we can afford.

Oh I forgot to add we would be building close to Fremantle on a sub divided corner block

Fremantle is great! My partners family are in bicton and we love it there but was a little our of our budget and my family are all north so when we do have kids need babysitting close

Sounds like a plan! We're a bit older so kids are potentially on the horizen but I don't remember thinking my parents loved me any less because I didn't have a big room

We've upgraded some stuff we wouldn't have done if we were ten years younger but I see this being our house for at least 10 years, then we might need more space for children getting older.

We are happy we went with our design as so many other houses near us are built right to the back fence, we would like a little bit of grass and small vegetable garden!

My boyfriend and I have always lived around Fremantle and both our family is down this way so it was perfect for us.

Our block is actually in Hamilton Hill and we looked at similar sized blocks down near Hammond Park and Piara Waters but the one in Hamilton Hill just seemed perfect. It wasn't much smaller than what the new estates were offering and the price was very reasonable.

I think that even if we do end up staying in this house and have children in it, we hope to only have 2 kids and we could fit that in our house. I grew up in a 3 x 1 with my mum and brother so if we did have kids sooner than expected I think we could manage in what we hope to build. I hope

But yeah I'm so excited to start looking at different designs builders offer and can't wait to just get started.

Hey. We are building on a 450s/m in Hilton - so close to where you are! We were in a similar situation where we looked at land in estates SOR, but happy with our decision to have chosen land closer to freo etc. We ended up building with redink, but spoke to 10+ builders before we made up our mind. It does make a difference who your salesperson is. My advice is to do your homework and get as much done through your salesperson before you sign up. Good luck and congratulations!

All the best with your build. We are with redink after enquiring through home group Ventura and National homes. Look For a builder that will give you a quote upfront. Include As many things Now In The Price before You Go To prestart. Which builder communicates With You promptly And can quickly draw up a decent plan for you. As a guide we are paying $755 a square meter for our house and we haven't skimped on upgrades. Have a look at our plan in my thread. If you do have kids you will build again. You'll find you need that extra space.

Thanks everyone! This site has been an absolute lifesaver. I would have no idea what I am meant to be doing otherwise.

Has anyone dealth with Metro Strata in Perth at all?
We are currently looking into them because they seem to be a lot more helpful than any of the other builders I have contacted and they also allow you to have other tradies come in and do work on your house, which from my understanding isn't common with builders such as HBC.

At the moment my partner and I are hoping that we will get our building contract prior to settling on our land to avoid paying stamp duty up front. Can anyone who bought their land seperate from their home give me an idea of the time frame from finding your land and doing up builders contracts and such? Just so I have an idea of the process time.

Thank you in advance

Im in a similar situation. i am building a 3x2 on a strata block 320m2 near Joondalup.
I signed up for the house and land pretty much on the same day, FEB 18th, but they are separate. My building contract is meant to be done end of next week, they said 8-10 weeks originally.

Thanks Jayboy21. When you say your building contract sorry do you mean just the contract that you take to the bank to get approval or the contract after all of the council approvals and building can begin?
Sorry Im just a bit confused.

I want to get my builders to do up contract before my land settles and the guy at Metro Strata said they could possibly do it up in 6 weeks as they were actually the guys who were offering the same block in a house and land package (We chose to purchase the land seperately)

At the moment the bank is asking for another $8k for our deposit as we will be paying stamp duty if we dont have a builders contract by settlement.

It's all really confusing and daunting.

Ours took 5 weeks to get the contract for the bank we needed it for our loan.

Only downside is you don't get a lot of time to make sure everything you wanted included in the build is there and anything you add later you will need to find the cash for. We spent nearly $15,000 at prestart much of which if we realised we could have had in the building contract....

having the same issue here - wish we had added things into our build prior to prestart. we have added a fair bit in cost too - but its mainly for structural things.. really should have done that with the salesperson when we had the chance.

Thanks fmac & asj25!

I have already printed out the massive list of "things you forget" from H1 and I'm going to make sure I take that in with me along with the other things I would like.

Sorry can someone just clarify for me... When you talk about money being spent at pre start is the costs of your upgrades and variations that you pay separate to your mortgage?

Thanks

Also I have crossed homebuyers centre off my list as the guy I spoke to was not very helpful and I had to keep chasing him up only to be told that they apparently don't build in my area.
I don't know if there was any truth to that but it was a bit frustrating.

Yeah. Some will do prestart and then go to the bank but in many cases you need finance sooner.

Our was flooring, upgrades and changes to kitchen, extra cost to lay non standard tile size, bigger bath, stone in kitchen etc. The list was a bit longer then we had ever imagined! Though this is a house we plan on being in for 10+ years, we got into this house stuff later then most

Oh yeah I forgot about having to get finance before pre start. It makes sense now. Thanks fmac.
If you don't mind me asking how much extra did you have to pay for these changes?
Say if you included it in your initial contract how much would you have saved?

I think the cost would have been the same either way but by not having it in the initial contract it wasn't included in the loan amount which means we had to find the money.

Some of the increase price was we ended up having the builder to do our soakwells.

Our upgrades excluding soakwells was about $9000
We upgraded front door and flooring and the other really big expense was the kitchen. We changed to pot draws, undermount sink, cabinets over fridge recess and we got a second piece of stone for our kitchen island (we'd got one as part of an upgrade but would have meant island was only 80cm wide, it's now 1m wide). We used the stone that would have been the island in the bathrooms.

As I said all our tiles were in builders standard range but weren't standard size so that was extra cost for laying. The rest were small things that added up, china toilets not plastic, chrome wastes, underlay for carpets etc.

Our electrical upgrades were about $1500 of that cost. We got extra powerpoints in every rooms extra in kitchen and 2 way switches etc.

You can get around some of it by making major changes before the contract, get them to put in the top range of carpet, flooring etc then if you don't use top level you'll end up with a credit.

Yep the contract to give to the bank. When i got a pre-approval they gave me a whole list of things i needed. To buy the land and avoid stamp duty i need a contract from the builder. When i signed up for my land they gave me 2 months to get finance, i problem i have is the building contract is only gonna leave me barely 2 weeks to get the finance approval. That's providing the builder actually provides the contract on time, then i have worry about the bank not holding things up..

Once all that happens i can then do pre-start. im not sure about other builders i think some do the prestart earlier and include it in the initial contract. my builder lets me pay for all the variations/upgrades at handover...

Don't worry im still confused but im learning

Yours might be different as your not building in an 'estate' and from the sounds of it it's not a package? We had builders like metro strata etc that had 'packages' for our land but didn't end up going through with them.
As our land house finance is separate totally I think we can add our prestart changes - but am waiting for broker to confirm.
In terms of cost - out electrical was 1400, nib wall in bathroom 700, extending bench 500m 1600, smart data package 1200... So you can see it adds up...