Masterton Homes - The next thread 4.0

Thanks MGardz,
Post pics ! We need to see what life is like after you've settled in.

congratulations, Gilbson. Hose looks beautiful!

I don't think they care too much about liquidated damages. It's "only" $50 a day.
There is no real timeline for handover after PCI. The timeline might be more about final handover payment, after which you make an appointment to go and grab your keys. If a lot to fix from PCI, could take weeks
At keys you then make an appointment for appliances. CA take couple of weeks as they're quite busy

Your house looks great. Bold call on main blue door/frame. Don't think I've seen that before and I certainly wouldn't have had the guts to choose that, but I think you may have pulled it off!

Has anyone had a 4 piece bifold installed? How well is it working for you? Our 2 sets are shockingly poor quality. Joints, handles, locks rusting badly, doors not smooth and scratching the tracks, one lock broken and the rest reasonably hard to operate.
Pic of hinge (after cleaning!)


Also, major issue we didn't foresee is that kids can't operate the doors as top locks are too high so can only use bottom latches (but those are pretty hard to move also).

I'm hoping we just got a lemon that can be replaced/fixed and this is not normal quality. Keen to hear how others are finding their doors

Quasi try spraying the hinges and locks with WD-40. The surface rust will clean up and the locks are probably stiff as they are new.

Hi everyone,

I understand most people who are unhappy with Masterton are more likely to post than those who were happy with the build, however what im most concerned with is the timeline they quote and the likelihood of them achieving it.it.

Masterton have stated to us that it will take 12 months to build a duplex which is what we have essentially budgeted for.
From the post i have read single dwellings are taking on average 18 months to complete.

Has anyone actually had a single dwelling ready within 9 - 12 months or a Duplex within 12 months?

i understand Masteron will pay $50 per day over the contract date, does that include weekend also i.e $250 a week towards our temp rental accommodation?

Thanks

Hi Pommie!

Agree, this forum is only a handful of people!

We have built twice with Masterton, first time 2 storey 11 months including Christmas shutdown from slab to keys.

2nd time, our current build - hoping to get keys next week (just waiting on the IOC to come through for bank to make final payment) slab went down February and will be in by August so about 6 months slab to keys.

I think the area you are in has a HUGE impact along with supervisor.

Hope this helps!

I would be really interested in hearing from you a ball park figure of what your finished duplex cost is - of course only if you don't mind. It's something we would LOVE to do in the future! PM me if you like 🙂

Thanks Shell90,

Yeah our sales consultant kinda said the same thing that the Site Supervisor is key and he assured us we would get a good one in the area we are building in.

We are building the Eclipse Duplex with the Linear Fascade, im expecting its to cost just under 900K for a turn key solution and that's with minimal upgrades.

Pommie, timeline depends on where you are building as the issue is not masterton per se but availability of the trades people that they use (and they don't have enough). I can tell you with high confidence that Sydney inner West will run way over.

The $50 does not cover weekends, holidays or BORM rain days (even if it didn't rain in your house or your roof was up). We were about 80 (working non-holiday) days over and got paid for about half. So think of it as $175/wk. Make sure you budget for stress relief, marriage counselling etc for the 2nd year of your build

Hi Pommie,

We are building a dual occupancy, not a duplex but two houses on the one block.
We are building a main house (for me and my tribe) and a smaller house (oversized granny flat for my folks), Masterton did mention the generally longer timeframe with dual occupancies.
We started our building adventure with M in August 2015. We suffered delays with getting initial plans, I understand that at the time drafting was just swamped, so our initial concept plans were not available till November 2015. There was quite a bit of work that was needed for DA submission, so again we had a gap in time as documents were prepared ... concept plans, hydraulic engineer plans for stormwater drainage/design, landscape design, driveway design, BAL rating information and BASIX requirements.
The DA was submitted to local council in March 2016 ... our DA obtained approval in June 2016.
From June 2016 through till November 2016 M worked on getting our final construction plans correct in order to obtain our Construction Certificate.
We moved into Construction in December 2016, our slabs were laid in February 2017.
We are probably around 3 - 4 weeks off finishing.

All up for us, it will be 2 years from Tender to Keys.
However, in being fair the first 10 months or so was getting our project prepared and through local council.
The length of your project from start to finish will certainly depend on your local council - how stringent they are, conditions on your block of land (retaining required, bushfire rating, flood rating etc) and the Council's processing time.

We've found the Construction period to be excellent.
Our Site Supervisor is amazing, very organised, friendly, approachable and efficient. He has literally turned our experience around. We are very happy with our build, the quality so far is really impressive, all trades have been experienced, polite and helpful. We love the look of our new home and we cannot wait till keys.

Where abouts are you building Pommie?

Thanks everyone. Delays with the DA and construction certification im not too concerned about , its when we have to knock down our existing house and move to temp accommodation that the $$ start to add up.

I didn't realise it was such a long wait between DA approval and construction certificate. Can i assume that Masterton will only ask you to knock down your existing house when the Construction Cert is ready? What happens if they say they are ready to lay the slab and we haven't got round to knocking down the place, is there a monthly penalty that we have to pay?

Im building in the Sutherland Shire along with everyone else by the looks of things (not sure if that's a good thing or bad?)

Hey Pommie,

I'm not sure that the delay between DA approval and Construction Certificate would be the case for everyone. Our local council issued our DA approval with a lot of conditions, so our project needed to address all council conditions and requirements before the Construction Certificate could be issued. Apparently one of the bigger differences with dual occupancy is that full Construction plans are not usually submitted along with the DA. This was explained to us as council usually place amendments and conditions on DA approval, so full Construction plans are not drawn up until the conditions/requirements are issued. This may notbe the case for everyone, but it was for us.

Yes, the timing of demolition is a concern as you want to be ready to roll as soon as M are ready to move into Construction, but not too far in advance. We demolished in December 2015 ... anticipating DA to be approved Feb/Mar 2016, we thought we'd have a slab down around Easter 2016. However, we moved into Construction in December 2016.
So, yes ... block sat vacant for 12 months.
Luckily, we are living with family, so this timeframe blow out didn't cost us in rent, but I reckon my sanity has taken a fair beating.

It may be worth deciding on a demolition company and then getting an estimate of lead time that they need, and then trying to obtain an estimate from local council on processing times.

One piece of advice I was given from a builder friend, was to not demolish prior to obtaining DA approval. Just in case, for whatever reason, local council knock back your DA. By not demolishing you could still submit your build as a 'renovation' which may have easier regulations to meet. This may not apply as Masterton don't do 'renovations' so you'd have to change builders anyway, if this turned out to be case.

If you exceed the pre-construction period, you are charged a monthly fee.
For us it was $950 a month, and yes we exceeded this several times over as council delays are not taken into consideration (they are at your own expense). Check your contract for this clause.

Hi everyone
We have been in construction for 9 months and has been very slow throughout. Our bricks are just completed and yet to be cleaned, the top level roof is on but the bottom can't be installed as scaffold is still in the way pending brick clean and upper level painting. We have 8 weeks left in contract period and have no hope of being complete by then let alone Christmas. What's everyone's experience timing wise from this point to completion? SS doesn't seem too concerned but at the same time can't even forecast when they could be completed

Our construction fence went up on the 8th Feb and our slab was laid on the 29th March. In that time we've had about 20 days of claimed rain as well. We are currently at lock up. Our tiles were delivered on Friday so I'm expecting them to be done this week. I am still optimistic that we ll be in by Christmas!
Our Ss is awesome though and has been great at keeping us up to date and keeping everything running fairly
Smoothly!

http://preludehome.tumblr.com/

A couple more pics of the house - in panorama.





Can't wait for the appliances to go in.

Thanks beeprelude. We've just found out that our site supervisor has quit and finishes up today which is bad news as it's means they will likely sit for 4 weeks before they can hire someone and get things going again. He was number 4 in SS and lasted the longest by far! Can't believe your so far ahead of us but started months after us. Guess it all comes down to the SS.

Sevenths - our new SS (who started a month ago to replace our old SS) is going to take on most of your SS's jobs. He's a great guy and seems quite organised but he'll now have prob over 40 jobs so not humanly possible to do too good a job. Poor guy.

Gibson your house looks great! How long till the big move?

beeprelude can't wait to see pics of tiles laid. I think the best part of this chaos called building has been to see all your own selections start to come together. I've found it really exciting

Sevenths the frequent change of SS sounds hectic, and frustrating for you. So sorry this has been your experience, I'm not sure how well I'd be holding it together with all that going on. I hope the new SS improves the situation.

We've had electrical fit off happening today ...

Pommie, for every builder people who are not happy are more likely to post. We have a number of threads on this forum for different builders and remember someone mentioning that people from another thread read Masterton one and told others in their thread something along these lines: If you think your builder is bad, go to Masterton topic and see what real bad is.

I think it tells a lot.

May I ask what made you choose Masterton?

I went with Masterton primarily cost and secondly risk. This is a big venture for us and we thought a volume building would not only keep costs down but also add more certainty / reduce risk to the build.