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Hi I am building avoca 34sq in box hill, it has taken around 12 months now and still haven't been completed yet as I experienced many delays at the each stage, which is very annoying. did firstyle provide a finish date to you? who is your site manager? richard or jeremy?
12 months since the construction began or since you signed the contract?
Richard is our site supervisor. The finish date as per the contract is 7 June, but the kitchen company they were using went into liquidation last month. They have revised our contract to 26th June.[/quote
Interested to know how it all went. We are building in Austral with Firstyle and we are already 3months past contact date, no explanation of why. It has been 14months since the slab was layed.
Hi I am building avoca 34sq in box hill, it has taken around 12 months now and still haven't been completed yet as I experienced many delays at the each stage, which is very annoying. did firstyle provide a finish date to you? who is your site manager? richard or jeremy?
12 months since the construction began or since you signed the contract?
Richard is our site supervisor. The finish date as per the contract is 7 June, but the kitchen company they were using went into liquidation last month. They have revised our contract to 26th June.[/quote
Interested to know how it all went. We are building in Austral with Firstyle and we are already 3months past contact date, no explanation of why. It has been 14months since the slab was layed.
It got really slow between bricks and pre-lining (5 months, including Christmas break etc). We kept pushing and now they have picked up the speed. It's still looking like they could give us not too long from the contract date.
We chose tiles in a separate appointment. We had to go to Abruzzo tiles for tiles, I am not sure if there are other tile providers.
Color's appointment will be in Firstyle head office. You will choose wall colors, fixtures, kitchen benchtop, cabinet colors etc.
We chose tiles in a separate appointment. We had to go to Abruzzo tiles for tiles, I am not sure if there are other tile providers.
Color's appointment will be in Firstyle head office. You will choose wall colors, fixtures, kitchen benchtop, cabinet colors etc.
When did you choose your tiles? Was it a month out to the stage being started?
Another question - did your slab go down quite quickly after the CDC application was approved?
We chose tiles in a separate appointment. We had to go to Abruzzo tiles for tiles, I am not sure if there are other tile providers.
Color's appointment will be in Firstyle head office. You will choose wall colors, fixtures, kitchen benchtop, cabinet colors etc.
When did you choose your tiles? Was it a month out to the stage being started?
Another question - did your slab go down quite quickly after the CDC application was approved?
We finished all our appointments late Feb I think.
Our finance set us back, it took a while.
Here is the rough timeline
1. go through all appointments (external colors, internal colors, tiles)
2. get updated contract price
3. back and forth with your choices, finalise your choices and sign and submit.
4a. get your final finance approval and submit it to Firstyle.
4b. Firstyle works to get DA/CDC approval.
5. submit your commencement to construct letter from the bank to Firstyle.
6. Firstyle starts your construction 20 business days after the letter is submitted.
I hope above is clear in terms of timelines. Some of these steps takes weeks/months, some of them take days.
4.
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
This is very worrying. What is their answer to all the defects? At what stage do you learn about the 1.5m cable, etc? We are in stage 5 (paint and tiling, with tiling almost complete and 1 coat of paint already in). I hope you get your house on time.
Also, to anyone building with Firststyle homes, there is a new Facebook group now -
https://www.facebook.com/groups/183341544210483/
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
I’m so sorry that you are going through all this. My question is why is product reviews so positive? Make it more public so these builders get a warning and stop doing a below average job. Also, how was all this not picked up at PCI?
From our side we kept warning them that our rental agreement is ending in June and we would like the property delivered in time. They continue to delay and do not give us an end date at all. This is so frustrating, I have emailed so many times.
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
I’m so sorry that you are going through all this. My question is why is product reviews so positive? Make it more public so these builders get a warning and stop doing a below average job. Also, how was all this not picked up at PCI?
From our side we kept warning them that our rental agreement is ending in June and we would like the property delivered in time. They continue to delay and do not give us an end date at all. This is so frustrating, I have emailed so many times.
We did the same with rental,we had to move twice, the girl at the time said it's not their problem.
A lot of it was picked up at PCI,it was a week before Xmas, they just wanted to hand over and assured everything will still get completed.
I'm a carpenter and have worked in the project home industry for 20years and have never seen such a mess!
The general manager and construction manager just lie, they are worse than used car salesmen!
We have left a negative review on product review.
I don't know how there are so many positive ones,I don't know anyone who has had a good experience!
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
I’m so sorry that you are going through all this. My question is why is product reviews so positive? Make it more public so these builders get a warning and stop doing a below average job. Also, how was all this not picked up at PCI?
From our side we kept warning them that our rental agreement is ending in June and we would like the property delivered in time. They continue to delay and do not give us an end date at all. This is so frustrating, I have emailed so many times.
We did the same with rental,we had to move twice, the girl at the time said it's not their problem.
A lot of it was picked up at PCI,it was a week before Xmas, they just wanted to hand over and assured everything will still get completed.
I'm a carpenter and have worked in the project home industry for 20years and have never seen such a mess!
The general manager and construction manager just lie, they are worse than used car salesmen!
We have left a negative review on product review.
I don't know how there are so many positive ones,I don't know anyone who has had a good experience!
Also when the inspector came from the commissioner,he told me that firstyle were officially on a watch list because they have had so many complaints about defective works
This is concerning. I hope they realise they are under the watchlist and do a better job.
Please keep us posted on how you go with NCAT.
This is concerning. I hope they realise they are under the watchlist and do a better job.
Please keep us posted on how you go with NCAT.
Yes,will do.
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
I’m so sorry that you are going through all this. My question is why is product reviews so positive? Make it more public so these builders get a warning and stop doing a below average job. Also, how was all this not picked up at PCI?
From our side we kept warning them that our rental agreement is ending in June and we would like the property delivered in time. They continue to delay and do not give us an end date at all. This is so frustrating, I have emailed so many times.
We did inspections at every stage with independent inspector and after we were provided with report requested for the fixes before next stage commenced, and requested for another inspection of rectified work. We also got independent electrician to have a look at electrical installed that's how we found out they used wrong cable size.
We are also suspecting that there may be water ingress in the wall next to our stairs as they ha e removed a few bricks on the external wall (don't know what for) but this was not covered during the heavy rains we had back in April, gaping hole is still there at the moment uncovered. Hopefully at PCI inspection our inspector will be able to pick up any water ingress from this as they will be checking.
First home buyer here. Also building in Austral. We bought a home and land package with Firstyle Homes in 2021. Before we paid our deposit we were told that land registration would be early 2022, unfortunately there was a 12 month delay and land wasn't registered until early 2023 (maybe due to covid, doubt it though). AND THEY CHARGED US $10K FOR THEIR DELAY!!! Fair enough if we bought the land first and it was up to us to have it registered and ready for them to build. But the clause was in our contract sooo I guess we had to bare the cost.
Construction finally started in Feb 2023 and practical completion date was supposed to be 17/11/23, as stated in our contract. But now we are 1 week away from June and house is still not complete. They did say approx practical completion date would be around the 10/6.. but we'll see.
The poor workmanship is a whole nother story. They forgot to put my roof sarking in, they mismatched my roof tiles, and there were a lot of defects picked up by our independent site inspector. Noggins not installed properly in frames, offsets to windows, cracked damaged frames, waterproofing were not up to standard, damaged sliding door and they installed a 1.5m cable for my 14kw ducted air con when they should be using 2.5, using undersized cables can cause cables to overheat and may cause a fire.. there's many more on the list but we'd be here all day.
I definitely would not be recommending them to anyone. Our first home buying experience is definitely not what I thought it would be and I highly advise those building to also get an independent site inspector, especially if your building with a high volume builder.
Yes, the worst builder I ever experienced,3 years to build our property, workmanship is disgusting. Waterproofing leaks, external walls out of plumb by 60mm, sagging balconies,no lvls installed, missing tiles in bathrooms on handover. My whole upstairs squeaks,they told me its where I've put my furniture and upon further inspection no joist are fixed to joist hangers, Just sitting in them, the paint work and rendering is terrible,can still see pencil marks on skirting and architraves,every tile is drummy in the laundry and every second one everywhere else,the fencing is about to fall over and is like the zig zag railway,all needs redoing, paints blistering on render,windows leak,every wall with strap bracing rattles because not one of them is tensioned and nailed off,the list is never ending!!
They can't provide certification for waterproofing, frame stage and structural engineering and the certifier who did the inspections has had his licence cancelled due to doing inspections without actually going to site!
The commissioner was here last week, just waiting for the works order to be sent to them.
Either way,I will be going to NCAT next.
I strongly wouldn't advise building with this company!!!
Our lives are a mess because of them,our mental health has declined so much, the toll it has taken on us is nearly to much to beer!!!
So sorry for what your going through. It's quite stressful as everyone puts their life savings into a home only for builders to rush jobs and not provide quality homes fit enough to be lived in.
I hope you get the result you need from commissioner and NCAT.
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