Masterton Homes - The next thread 4.0

Hi Everyone,
So we have been busy getting our act together and our tender is being written up. Any advice for us for the tender?

Steer clear of Gabraels house demolition.....nightmare!

Our stories are so similar. We sold two years ago on August 3rd. And moved in with my parents. It's never easy and we didn't think we'd still be here two years later. But it's worth it. We live on site for the build and save a lot as we pay minimum rent.


http://preludehome.tumblr.com/

I hope I won't have to deal with M anymore (touch wood!) our journey ends just in time for our little girl's first birthday and our home was just perfect for the day

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Hi everyone

My partner and I are in the process of getting a brand new Masterton harmony elite built on a block of land we have just secured in Edmondson park.

I've gone through this forum to try and pick at a few things.
We have just paid $1000 which is refundable for them to produce a tender for the house including site costs.

From what I understand the base price of the house is 265k and then we had around 23k of changes which included raked ceilings and skylights .

The person we spoke to gave us a "rough estimate" of 397k.. I tried to press her in more details about where 109k came from to which she said there are lots of things like flooring... To which I thought doesnt the yes inclusions pack included flooring ?

To all that have gone through this phase could you please help me out ?

Does the yes inclusion and mansion pack which we are getting include a pretty much turnkey house minus driveway, fence , landscaping ?

The fall of the land is around 1.2-1.5m from the absolute front of the land to the rear corner.

Thanks a lot
Alex

Alex have a look at my blog there's a piece on budget but it's a bit older now

That $109k would be site costs plus council paperwork plus basix. It should be noted on your tender. The yes & mansion package includes tiles & carpet etc. But its all standard ones

Hi Alex, that sounds about right. We were told by the time we did the driveway, landscaping and all other odds and end to have a fully finished block and house it's about double the Base price. I'd say we won't quite hit double but it won't be far off.

Thanks for that .
I was told to budget around 60k for site cost and basix by the same person hence the question of 109k vs 60k

Hey all ... nice to hear from everyone. It's felt far too quiet on here lately.

beeprelude - we are #twinning. It will be so lovely once we have our new homes, and yes I hope the lengthy delay will be all worth it. I tell myself that building a house must be a little like childbirth ... the bad bits contract in your memory and you only remember the amazing parts and how awesome the end result is. After all, plenty of people go on the build more houses!

shiraz_elite - I'd try and make sure any big ticket items/selections or plan changes are included in your Tender. This just locks in the price and safe guards against a nasty surprise with a future Tender Variation. There can be a bit of time between Tender and actual Selections, items included in the Tender will be at today's price ... not the price when you do Selections.

MGARDZ - Congratulations. What a beautiful looking celebration for your precious poppet. Well done on navigating the first year with both your little Miss AND Masterton! Woo Hoo for finally being finished with all issues concerning M.

Rox82 - I too thought there was an option with using RWT water for the washing machine. I'd heard it was common for plumbers to come back and change the connection to mains water. Having said, I've asked around about washing in RWT water, lots of people have told me it's not a problem, they've not noticed a difference (compared to mains water) and it's a saving for families. I'm not 100% sold, I'm keen to see how we go.

thisisadu - We too are building the Harmony Elite. Our Tender is dated Aug 2015 (so now we'd be considered old prices).
Our base price was 246,750 + 64,548 (site costs) + 29,051 (statutory/council requirements) + 12,394 (customer options/variations/promotions). We have both YES Package and Mansion Package. Our Tender price came in just over 350K.
Our price now, after all selections (Tiles/Electrical/Air Con/Colours/Kitchens) is just under 380K.
All that is left for us to complete after handover is driveway, landscaping and clothesline. We will have a fair bit of electrical to do as we went very bare minimum with electrical, preferring to do more ourselves after handover.

Thisisadu, welcome to the building journey. I think everyone goes through a few rounds of budget shock during the tender and build.
Most people will upgrade the following to some extent :
Kitchen fit out
Bathroom tiles, shower screens, fittings
Flooring ( the standard carpets are very basic)
Air conditioning
Data and electrical (one double PowerPoint per room isn't enough in this age )
Light points
Stairs
Stacker doors instead of sliding

My advice on the tender is ask for anything you think you might like and then decide if the cost is worth it for you.
Best of luck on your build.

Thought I spied my kitchen cabinets in the garage as I drove up to our block ... turns out it's tiles!



A tradie was on site and only too happy to tell me what had been delivered/done today. We've been really impressed with the friendliness of our trades - all quite nice tradies and happy to chat to us.

Impressed to see our undercoat applied -


More undercoat -


Our wall colour is 'June Fog' which looks a little more beige than grey in these pics. I was picturing a soft grey, I hope with more coats of paint it might change a little. Also hoping with our grey benchtop & furniture it will look more grey than beige. Either way, I'm pleased it's a pleasant neutral colour.

Had my meeting today with Masterton and Fair Trading on site. I won't post outcome here but those who are interested can private message me for details. Although I will post this. For the Masterton representative that came to my house today and said dont worry about my sales lady Eileen that she died was outrageous behaviour on their part to even tell me this. I asked if he was serious and he said yes. If he can say that behind an employees back and be so disrespectful what does he say about us the paying customers.

My fall was very small and they charged me $11 grand soil removal no rock found luckily.

We received our building inspectors report. It contained a few things we didn't notice which we are adding to our PCI list , my favourite is this item:



Apparently the painter found it easier to hide the half empty paint cans in the ceiling instead of leaving them in the garage with the spare tiles & bricks?

Gibson that does not surprise me at all. Tradies are just like my 3 kids ... "if we hide the dirty plate/wrapper/apple core etc ... under the bed/under the sofa/down the side of the sofa cushion & so on ... mum & dad will never find out." Yeah right .... we always find out & you'll get in big trouble. Just do it properly in the first place!

Sandra that is appalling.

Ps can't recall who asked about the laundry taps, but ours are connected to mains, not rainwater. Can't recall if we specified this in the tender though ... too long ago!

Rox82 - we specified at tender or construction plans stage (can remember which - definitely started at tender but I think it needed to be specified in the plan) that rwt doesn't feed laundry. I need to check if they did it but I think they were supposed to fit a little switch over valve so we could choose on the fly.
From memory you have a choice for laundry but not for toilets or outdoor taps. There was a thought to switch off for toilets since I read it could sometimes stain the loo.

Congrats and Hope your little one had a great 1st Bday. That table looks amazing McGRADZ