Boutique Homes

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7th_Cavalry how long has your land been delayed by? Ours was originally meant to settle last year March and it got postponed till Oct last year. It's normally expected to be delayed as the estimates the land sales give is always way off and a sale point to make it appealing to those looking to buy <====that's how me and hubby got sucked in coz we thought settlement was only in 6 months when it ended up being 1 yr and 1 month[/quote]

It was initially June last year then moved to Oct then April this year, it is now 1 year and 2 months since I signed up with Boutique. Hopefully we will get a notice to settle after Easter. Hopefully my basket will be full of eggs this Easter

Looking good progress for both of you Ozden and Banehouse.

Thanks 7th_Calvary. Hopefully settlement isn't much longer for you. Bricking on our place hasn't finished due to the front of the house requiring higher scaffolding so they have ordered some to arrive but apparently it won't be till next week. Plastering is meant to begin tomorrow, they delivered a front door yesterday as well. It's moving along slowly, but now our SS is trying to catch up on the 5 weeks lost time by smashing it. Apparently were the only client of his telling him to take his time lol

Since my last post the bricking has been completed with the cladding and finally the 1st base of render has been applied. Our SS got the sack which was a bit disappointing as we thought he was great, but apparently his organisational and communication with other people wasn't the best. But today our new SS called and literally he made my jaw drop. His booked everything in including painters so the next month is looking quiet busy with our build.

Love the facade. Looks great with the third garage option!

Thanks Measure

Hi

Im new to this forum and had a question regarding Boutique. Im currently in the prestart phase building a Barcelona 31. My question is, I have a mate in the carpet industry who can get me the exact carpet I like at a great price, can I tell Boutique that I do not want any carpet installed by them and I will take care of it later?

Thanks.

Welcome HarryWinston, yes you can get the carpet installed yourself after handover. They will give you a credit for the area's carpeted.

Hey Ozden86, where are you building? My SS got replaced too, the new one seem to have organised loads of stuff but not a lot being done.


Boutique Capri 27 Seabreeze. Passed to construction on 7th Nov 15.

Hi HarryWinston. Welcome.


Boutique Capri 27 Seabreeze. Passed to construction on 7th Nov 15.

Thanks for your reply, does the same apply to the tiling/wooden flooring?

Hi HarryWinston.

Yes you can remove all flooring (besides wet areas such as bathroom, toilet, ensuite, laundry) and they will give you credit. I got $7500 credit for a 30sq home.

I installed my own engineered floorboards and carpet after handover.

You can get all flooring removed except for the wet areas (bathroom, ensuite, laundry)

We are building the Barcelona 26 and had our flooring removed got a credit for approx $6K.

Have it included in your PWC. They should be able to provide you with floor plan that details the floor coverings that you can give to your floor guys.

If you want to swap details more then happy to do so under the refer a friend program. Will get you 750 credit for your. Ok our consult! Has to be included in your PWC though!

Floorboards yes same applies with credit but Tiling isn't as easy, tiling in living areas you can get a credit for but bathrooms and laundry need to be tiled by Boutique to get certificate of occupancy as I didn't want tiling as I wanted polished concrete floors but they wouldn't allow it as it's apparently their standard to tile wet areas.

General question for those of you still going through PWC or Pre-Start.

This is a question/rant.

Have any of you found that the level of engagement or communication from your consultants has dropped off considerably? I've just escalated to senior management our concerns over the last few months. We are really stuggling with the lack of communication coming from out consultant and have become increasingly upset with our experience with Boutique.

Short summary: our prestart consultant went on maternity leave late last year. We were very happy with her and never had any issues. She set the expectation that any responses would be within 24-48 hours, fine with us. Our new consultant started ok but as we're having to go through amendments closer to title, and the urgency has increased. She has almost gone AWOL. We have requested a couple of things recently which have taken TWO and THREE WEEKS for responses respectively. Phone calls have gone unanswered, no apologies or acknowledgement of our frustration.

It's been so infuriating. I would not consider the requests needy nor complex. If expectations are set or a brief explanation, we'd certainly be more accomodating. What makes it worse is that we both work in industries where client management is critical to the success of our businesses - and the alarm bells are ringing.

It's left a genuine sour taste to our experience with them and we haven't even started building yet!!

is it just us!!??

We have just been through our PWC and contract signing. Our sales consultants were excellent, some of the best customer service I have ever received from any business.

Once we handed over to pre-start it wasn't as impressive. As most consultants handle many clients they are often in colour appointments or other meetings which can take up their whole day. This meant some of our questions took a few days to answer. It was frustrating as we didn't feel the questions were particularly hard to answer however it seemed that if they had a consultation going they gave only that one client their full undivided attention.

As it was only a matter of days we just worked through it and still kept a great relationship with our consultant. If it was weeks like you mentioned then I would definitely be following that up with management.

Do you get any replies when you call them directly or do they blow that off also?

Definately agree with a lot of what you say, particularly re: experience with handover to Pre-Start from sales and can definately relate to your frustration regarding questions.

We do eventually get replies but they're days later. Conversations are had over the phone but although we request commitment and confirmation in writing (via email) it's never directly addressing the concern or question. Example; since late last year we have had two core questions - a quotation and an addenda (which we're happy to pay costs) based from the quotation. We are almost in April and we are still none the wiser. Understand they are busy people, as are we, I would not imagine this is hard to organise as our previous consultant did this within 48 hours.

If we got a "Hey guys, snowed under; i'll get back to you by the end of the week as i'm in other consultations" I'd be more understanding. We get crickets chirping for days.

My pre start consultant has been very good. I usually send an email to her in the evening with a few questions about costs and changes I am thinking about and I usually get a reply in the afternoon the next day.

My main gripe with Boutique is having to email them constantly to get prices for upgrades and also what is available in Cat 1, Cat 2 etc of an upgrade. It would be far easier if they had a website with all this available and they give each client a login so they can view the full range of upgrades along with their costs.

Hi Donaldouk were building in Aspire Plumpton (literally behind Caroline Springs). And where are you building?

We're building in oakdene estate in Ocean Grove.

Think we are running a little behind at the moment. Not a lot happened in the last few weeks. Painting suppose to start last week, not even a sight of paint anywhere. Also suppose to have finished the external cladding 2 weeks ago.

Atleast you got plastering done, our plastering is starting tomorrow and they estimated the plastering will take 7-8 days which I personally think is a long time considering my brother in laws house got plastered in 3 days <= his building with Mimosa. But I'm happy though that it's moving along slowly, I guess anything is better than nothing.