Big M / Metr!con Homes: - Studio M & Upgrade Prices!

Hi everyone – I’ve had a number of PMs and comments on our blog regarding the build process with M, so I thought it may be helpful to start a new thread for all M customers to contribute to! Moderators if any info in this thread isn’t approved for general knowledge then let me know!

Please have a read through, post replies with any suggestions and modifications and hopefully we can make this a resource for future M customer to benefit from!


OVERALL TIMELINE AND CONTRACT PROCESS

Go and check out all the M displays that you can. See what floorplans appeal (or not) and you should be able to find at least 2 houses that you could see yourself living in. You’re able to make changes to the floorplan, so the house doesn’t have to be perfect as you see it (of course, changes cost money, but maybe not as much as you think).

When you find a floorplan to start from, get the sales consultant (SC) to give you a walkthrough. If they’re any good, they should be able to point out everything that is nonstandard (which is most things!) and what is.

$1000 secures your base price of the house, paid to your SC. Note: From this deposit date, you have 150 days to make the final contract unconditional – this includes such things as land settlement, demolition, finance approval etc. If not, the clause allows for an increase of 0.5% of the contract price (not base house price!) per month of delay.

After initial deposit, M will do a site survey and soil test… unless your block of land hasn’t titled, in which case, settle in for a wait!

At your preliminary contract appointment with your Customer Service Consultant (CSC), you’re presented with siting diagrams and initial floorplans. If (like us) you want to make changes to the floorplans, best you do them even before the initial deposit stage, so you can give them to your SC, and they should be drawn up for your prelim contract. However, at our prelim contract we had done maybe half the floorplan changes we wanted, and submitted further changes at this point.

As a rough guide, modifying our Nolan wasn’t that expensive for what we gained;
- laundry redesign (move door and add walk in linen) about $700
- powder room redesign (enclose WC and sink in one room, feature windows) $500
- ensuite redesign (swap toilet and shower, making huge shower) $500

When you’re happy with your prelim contract, cough up another $3000 to get the final contract drawings done.

Studio M colour selection, electrical and tiles – see the next few posts for info.

Final contract – despite what your CSC may say, there still is room to fine tune changes at this stage without penalty. We changed the internal access door handle, the kitchen sink and a few other things here as a “pre construction variation”.

M then will apply for your building permit, and have 30 days to start construction from the date the building permit is approved.

STUDIO M

Be well prepared, as you’ve gotta choose EVERYTHING for your house at this appointment! See as many M display homes as you can, take photos and make notes of what you like.

Everything from tiles, bricks, mortar, doors, windows, paint, kitchen, cabinets, vanities etc needs to be picked. You mau have the ability to change your selections afterwards; depending on your consultant you might have 1-2 weeks to finalise your choices.

Visit places like Austral/Boral/Selkirk Bricks, and get their lists of houses built using their bricks. Also grab a few sample bricks of the ones you like!

Some rough guidelines on pricing upgrades - would other people building with M please submit your upgrade prices in this thread and I can add them to this list!

KITCHEN
- 20mm cat 1 caesarstone - $690/sqm
- upgrading 600mm oven/cooktop/range to 900mm, Technika - $1170
- Vinyl wrap $4000
- 2pack (not available anymore?) $6500
- ABS edging $100+
- Upgrade handles – category 5 $500
- Upgrade handles - category 2 $150
- Upgrade 20mm to 40mm ceasarstone $500
- Pot drawers (2 or 3) $220
- Cavity door (eg to pantry) $163
- capped cold water point for water for fridge - $103
- Rebate on kitchen appliances; rangehood, oven and cooktop (we are buying our own and installing after handover) about $750 rebate.
- Oven tower Upgrade; includes oven, microwave provision, overhead cupboard and 2 pot draws and you get pot draws where the original microwave provision was and cupboards where the oven provision was - Roughly $1200
- technika dishwasher $1050
- Microwave and trim $490
- overhead cupboards over fridge with two hinged doors $390
- overhead cupboards both sides of rangehood $840
- Upgrade to glass technika rangehood $270
- Glass splashback $1320
- 2 x 3 pot drawers ilo cupboard -$430, Microwave tower $1390, servery $2,200)
- Butlers Pantry - $5950

INTERNAL
- Tiled kickers $50
- Upgrade doors to Balmoral-2 approx $100 per door?
- Big pull handle and roller lock to front entry door $400
- Trilock approx $170+
- Privacy locks $25
STAIRS
- Upgrade to KDHM treads (stained wood stairs, no carpet) $2500
- Stainless steel balusters $1000
EXTERNAL
- Upgrade to Cat4 Austral on Nolan 41 $4500
- upgrade 20sq house to cat 4 brick (austral) $1782
- Off white mortar on Nolan 41 $900
- Flush mortar on Nolan 41 $300
- Front Elevation Render - $9,900
Internal Door - Garage - $326
Rear Garage Roller door ilo b/work - $505
Upgraded ensuite as per display - $2050
- change from roll up gge door to colorbond sectional (double) - $100
- Aluminium bi-part doors - 2110 x 3575 - $200 ea

- timber stained windows to the front of the house $515 each
- timber biparting doors (up to2107x3600mm) $2010 each
- Bulkheads around $300 each
- Frameless mirror sliding doors on robes &395

Daikin 15kw air conditioning - $12,950
Grand Outdoor Room - $3600
Eaves to first floor - $1980
Entry Columns and Bulkhead - $860
Increased height to robe sliding doors - $110 and $190
Guest room option - $2990
2 hinged doors to rumpus - $720
2 CSD to ensuite - $568
Turn space understairs into cupboard - $350

Miscellaneous
- Tiled shower base + chrome waste - $400 ea
- Cat2 ceasarstone to powderroom, bathroom $470
- flushmiser 2000l water tank, concrete pad and fittings/install - round - $4560

And here's some pics of some Studio M selections to get you started!

ELECTRICAL

Check the standard electrical plan carefully – there’s the bare minimum included! Electrical appointment takes 2-3 hours, depending on how well prepared you are. As usual, best advice is to print out the standard floorplan and mark in everything you want prior to the appointment. M will also email you a full pricelist of everything prior to your appointment,

Rough upgrade prices
- Double electrical powerpoint $61
- External junction box for light $50
- Wall, floor, step light point $56
- Downlight $46 (and if this is a “new” downlight point, add about $56 for a “ceiling light point” first!)
- Two way switch $50
- Three way switch $100
- IXL 4 lamp $500
- 4 star gas heater upgrade about $750
- Zoning for heating about $350

- garage door remote.. $860 - 2 hand remotes, 1 wall mounted remote, 1 p/pt.
- telstra trenching/cabling/fitting wall box - $335
- concrete paving - $2844 for 36 sqm
- tv points - $101 ea

- 2 exhaust fans - $228
Intercom - $1564
Alarm - $1500
Extra recycled tap - $120

*Edit* See these attached files for pictures of M light fittings and their prices (from Sept 09).

TILES

M have unfortunately reduced their tile range as of Aug 09, so there’s not many standard tiles. You can go to Beaumont Tiles in Oakleigh anytime for a stickybeak – the current standard range is marked by little blue dots on the tiles.

You can choose from quite a large variety of upgrades of course - hard to give prices as there's so many. Porcelain, glass and large tiles cost more to lay.

Your tile consultant should be able to give you a full costing of everything at the end of your appointment.

great thread idea, just with there was one for PD as it would help those looking to build with them

cheers

Thanks so much for going to the effort to comprise all the info.

Much appreciated.

Great idea for new people building with M. Would have been great info a year ago when we were going through all the preliminary stuff. My advice would be go to the site every day if you can to try and pick up mistakes before they get too much further into the build. I would go home after every part was done to check it against our contract. I would check all the photos I had of our house as a display home (we went to every Tribeca 36 and 40 that have been in Melbourne over the last 2 years and I photographed every room) and compared everything. I was amazed how many things ended up being different than the photos-some things actually worked in our favour and others I got them to change to how they were meant to be. I also agree with going to as many of their display homes as possible-I went to nearly every one that existed to know what was possible with M and gave you great ideas of what colors work together.
I would write notes after seeing any problems and then discuss the list each week when our SS rang. We were lucky in that our SS gave us his phone number on the first meeting so if there were any major issues I could call him straight away. I found developing a rapore with the tradies on site and sending some beers their way helped with things being done right and properly. I also found that a lot of pre-construction variations didn't seem to reach the tradies so I was glad I was there every day to let them know how things were meant to be. You can't catch everything but it certainly helps. We found it to be a very stressful year but in the end we got a beautiful house with only a few minor issues remaining (things that maybe get sorted out in the 3 month check but are easy enough for us to sort out if they don't).

Im not building with M, but great idea!! I did the same thing for Carlisle... these general threads limit repetitive threads and questions, and make info easy to find.

I might steal the idea of having approximate upgrade pricing.

There should be one for PD too.. if no one from PD is willing to do this, I will!

Even through we haven't gone very far (just repeating everything almost twice!), I might do one for H3nley if there is interest. I'm sure many other will contribute.

It'd probably be an idea to start one for h3nl3y - seems to be quite a few h3nley builders if you go by the listing of blogs!

not as many metr!con, but I'm hoping the metr!con builders out there will contribute more info to this thread, as I only know from my experience what upgrades cost, and I'm sure many other people would like to know some rough figures before wandering into their colour appointment and getting a big 5 figure upgrade bill!

speaking of which, I added a few photos of studio M to the first post above!

T&T

Generally speaking... if you can't say something nice, don't say it. Hence not much discussion re: M.

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Hi guys

We are building with Big M and I must say they do build very nice houses and by looking at their displays house and compare with other builders, quality wise Big M are ahead of the rest hence why they are the No1 builder here in Victoria and Australia.

We just started with our site start last week and our experience up to date has been ok.

We found the Customer Service Skills in replying back to email are a bit slow and frustrating at times, this just doesn’t happen with Big M, this also happens with the other builders. Not a good thing, but it tends to be the norm with all builders.

Double check your sales quote as you can be charged for things twice or they forget to put things in or take out.

We did our homework on what we wanted well before we had all our appointments, which made life easier on the day so you don’t forget things and don’t feel pressured as variations after contract do cost.

My advice would be doing your homework, by going to B-tiles in Oakleigh and see their range also ask Big M to give you a list of their Bricks and go to Boral and Austral Bricks, play around on their Studio M website.

If you want to save money do some things after handover, the more you do the more you save.

There are always bad building stories, they will outnumber good stories as people want others to know about their grief and also let others what to look out for whilst building, where all the good news goes unnoticed as they are happy in their home and have better things to do......

If this is one thing of concern, get yourself an Independent Building Inspector as it could save you headaches and money in the long run.

Throughout this forum what I have learnt it all comes down to your Site Supervisor/Project Manager and also the tradies they get.

Good Luck with your Build, you’ll know at the end of it all you’ll have a beautiful house.

If you like checkout my blog http://mickeyb-soho.blogspot.com/

Thanks very much slknv for taking thge time to help other people with their builds.

I am just waiting on my preliminary contract - it is supposed to be leaving their office today, so I will have my work cut out for me.

One thing I can add is if you are building in QLD, that M no longer use B'mont Tiles. M now have their own tile studio just around the corner from Studio M in Robina. We went and had a sticky beak, and there is quite a good selection of standard and upraded tiles available. Also, when you go to do your tile selction, you will get all the costings back the same day, which I think is fantastic.

we are building the nolan 41 with M and have been dealing with them since March 09. They have been very professional and responded in a resonable time frame to all our queries.

The reason we choose M was the Nolan floor plan, the other major volume builders are good as well and seem to deliver as a superior product as M.

All building is or can be stressful but hopefully at the end of the build the product delivered meets to your expectations and I have faith M will deliver on their promises to us.

As numerous people have pointed out, the more research you do prior to your appointments the easier the process is and potentially less stressful, as these appointments are full on and lots of decisions need to be made in a short time frame.

Good luck with all your builds!

Any pictures or updates on how your build is going? There's not many other people building Nolans for us to follow!

Have also updated the "electrical" post with some pictures of the Metricon lighting range. We found that some of their light fitting were well prices compared to what you'd find at BEacon etc, but some light fitting (in particular the external floodlights!) were hugely overpriced, so we just put in junction boxes at our electrical selection for later change to floodlights.

Anyone else care to contribute any info, in particular related to pricing of upgrades, which I can update the main info with?

T&T

Probably an appropriate question given the current weather in Melbourne.

Does anyone know what an air con upgrade costs with M?

I guys

Does anyone know what is standard with Metr!con when it comes to Termite Protection?

Thanks in advance

Erm, there's no standard termite protection. Cost us about $1400 or so I think.



Evap cooling is about $5000 for a Bonaire unit (Summer Breeze) with 5 outlets. We figured it's not good value so we're doing it after handover. If you want ducted refrigerated A/C, our salesperson said for double storey houses it's about (wait for it) ...$20,000... so we're not getting that

Double checked the contract
Your right there's no standard termite protection, we where quoted $1550 for a Homeguard termite protection.

For some reason I thought maybe we forgot to do it.

Cheers

you may want to price up that evap cooling from a dedicated heating & cooling specialist.

we were going to get M to install our evap system for the $4800 or whatever they charge, but I rang around and spoke to a few installers.. the standard unit M offers is the Bonaire Summer Breeze SBM65... this is apparently not a big enough unit to cool a house over 24/25 squares (according to the installers).

I got a quote for a Bonaire SBM75 (I think it was SBM) and it was $500 cheaper than metricon, has 3 more outlets and is a way more powerful unit.