Arden Developments

Hey Dave
Yeah that's what I thought so I asked them again. They need a letter that says approved.

I just thought this a bit unusual. We want to spend about 260k on this build and no more.

Hopefully we have the budget for an Arden home in the future. Going with Sherridon for this build.

Thanks
J

Wow ok. Different from my experience. They may have been burnt a few times recently.

I liked the look of Sherridon homes when I was picking a builder. Good luck with your build.

pEast & Laijer

Did you both have tender this week? Hope it all went down without too much stress and it's all systems GO from here!

We've got a date for final inspection already. Such a quick build!
Have updated the blog with a few pics if you're interested

Hey BigRedDoor,

How exciting it must be to see it almost complete!! It's looking beautiful!

Yeah, we did our tender last Wednesday, took up the whole day! We had asked for quotes on a lot of extra stuff like plantation shutters, timber laminate the whole first floor instead of carpet, upgrade to solid timber staircase, aggregate concreting and a bunch of other upgrades and extras. When the all the prices came back, it blew out our budget (as expected) so we deleted a few items, downgraded categories on a few items and upgraded categories on others to make full use of our budget .

We signed the tender that day, but over the weekend, we noticed there were a few mistakes on the colour document and the electrical plan, so the tender document is incorrect too. There were also a few things we forgot add/ask at tender appointment, so we are going to get pricing/answers. We will need to submit a tender variation, but structurally though, we are set and happy with what we have changed.

Other than that, we are pretty happy with how it went. Our tender presenter was more than happy to go back into the colour room with us and help us re-pick some colours and categories to maximise our budget.

Our contract appointment is next month. Hopefully we get all the tender variations sorted before then.

I am building the Bespoke 47 at the moment. My house is surrounded by a couple of other major builders including Metricon, Porter Davis and Englehart display homes. All of these houses are in lock up - fixing stage. Surprisingly Englehart is not as luxury as I thought in choosing frames/bricks and concrete slabs. It is only slightly better than PD and M, and Bespoke of Arden is also better than those two volume builders.
The default inclusion of Bespoke is using a lot of bricks on Level 1 outer wall (around 1/2 -2/3) together with some foam rendering but when I look at the display house of PD and M, pure foam for entire level1 outer wall. Another detail is that Arden use concrete slab for alfresco area (you can lay tiles or decking easier, especially tiles), but PD and M have nothing under alfresco cover -- only soil/gravel. Also, the display home of PD and M use boutique sliding aluminium door but Bespoke uses boutique bi-fold door. Arden will credit me back around $3000 if I downgrade to sliding door in living room.

I am quite happy with Arden, comparing with my neighbours which are all display homes. Oh, almost forgot : only arden use corner window. I have not seen PD & M use that kind of thing. However, arden increase the house price at least twice a year and now it is not cheap at all. Bespoke 47 is now 530K, almost 70K higher than 1.5 years ago.

Good to hear you're having a good exp with arden mate. We're short-listing arden but got a huge quote to build a 50sq home. Close to 700k Would be great to hear some more about your home?

50sq home close to 700k base on Bespoke 437? The basic price of Bespoke now is 530K so you have 170K for the upgrade, or may be the site cost is included. From my memory there are some major expenses in display such as glass & hard wood stairs (17K), fire place package (over 20k), smeg appliances (~18k), timber stairs (>25k) , downlights (>13k) and,upgraded tile pattern in Powder and Master ENS (>10k) and two sets of bi-fold door in living and kitchen (~6k).
I would suggest to take out the smeg . You can provide appliances to Arden from the good guys or E&S trading. Huge savings! Considering to use timber look laminate floor and sliding door instead of bi-fold. Use normal range of tiles in bathroom. Use range 1 bricks but do the rendering for the entire facade. Concrete roof tile range 1 is good enough. You can still get 90% similarity as the display house by adding 70K to the basic price which will be 530K+70K=600K.
Which I dislike the Bespoke display is they only put tiles on wet area in level 1 bathrooms. A house with marble fire place and in-build smeg coffee machine shouldn't do that:) Strongly suggest to put tile from floor to ceiling in all bathrooms.

Hi we are building with arden as well. We will have tenders tomorrow. Just wondering if we are going to sign contract during tender? Or will it be another appointment? As we need to have the building contract asap next week, to be able to apply land+construction loan. The land settlement is scheduled in three weeks time.

Hi,

No, the contract takes another month or so. And I would advise not to rush it too.

Furthermore I was able to gain construction finance based on my tender, I would be very surprised if you lender required a contract.

Another thing to note Is that you have to pay a 5% deposit on signing the contract.

Hope the tender goes well!

Thank you Jeeta. If you don't mind me asking, did you apply land and construction loan together with tenders documents? And which bank did you go with? Thanks.

Yes, I applied with tender docs and only gave cotract details later on. I ended up sticking with Westpac.

Do you have a broker, as they should be all over this.

Thanks for your info, I'm a little bit relieved now. I'm using broker and I feel that he should have known this things too. Will the price on tender be the same as for contract or will there be some price changes on the contract?

Hi I'm sure you found out more today, but in my experience the only thing to change, cost wise, between the tender and contract was that I need to upgrade to double glazed windows for the while house - leading to a unbudgeted $6k. I didn't make any other variations.

there should not be a price change if items in tender stay the same. Usually you will have some more ideas after the tender or contract stage. I have raised more than 10 variations after the contract..

Thanks everyone, we got our land loan sorted using the tender documentation.

tessar did they charge reasonable cost for post contract variations or just like other builders who try to make as much money as possible from variations?

Thanks Tessar.

Interesting points. You do seem to get a lot thrown in with the bespoke range. I'd keep the bi fold doors. They look so cool!

btw, i spoke to someone from arden and they said they don't let you buy your own kitchen appliances anymore unless you do the install yourselves.

Yes I would not be surprised they change the policy of installing appliances. Most volume builders will not accept that and Arden is eager to become one of them, especially from late 2016.

Normally they will keep silence unless you ask them for variations. A $500 charge will be on your invoice for change of mind. However, I remember they didn't charge me for a couple of variations (after contract but before site start). Once the site is started, the honeymoon is over

Hi all

Long time lurker, 1[sup]st[/sup] poster.

I am building moderately modified Votivo 43. Floor plan is almost finalised and colour selection is some time during the 3[sup]rd[/sup] week of March.

Wondering if anyone has upgraded your Tesla Powerwall 1 to Powerwall 2 through Arden, and if so, how much did it cost? When paying the deposit on 7 Jan(under their 2016 Dec pricing), I asked the sales consultant if we’d be getting Powerwall 2 since I knew the new version is coming. The SC said I’d be getting Powerwall 2 but it’s never documented, and now it’s the Powerwall 1 I’m getting according to the SC and the preliminary quotation. The SC reconfirmed this, and I feel slightly misled here.
Anyway I believe there should be no or very minimal difference as their retail price is almost the same.

Happy to share other info I have.

Hi BLKYG, I was told under the old pricing scheme you would only get Powerwall 1. You would have to pay extra to get version 2.

On another topic, any idea if you can actually charge a tesla car quickly off one of these? I thought you would need 3 phase power whereas all their inclusions are single phase.