Can you negotiate with Carlisle homes?

Hi Everyone,

I stumbled across this website the other day and have found it so far very useful. We are building a Montrose 36 later in the year...well when our land is eventually released later in the year.

We have our tender appointment with Carlisle Homes...so far we have been very happy but we were well aware of the hidden bits before we got into it all so far no nasty surprises but we are not done yet.

Anyway, back to the tender appointment.....had anyone tried to negotiate their final price with Carlisle?? can you negotiate price with volume builders? how far can you push or rather how do you bargain with them?

Hi we're also building with Carlisle - we didn't negotiate with them - however my husband "jokingly" said to our tender presenter "So... is that the best price you can do?" she didn't look too pleased and the response was; "we can't change the prices" (DH also joked around like this with our Sales Consultant who is building with Carlisle himself and he claimed that he couldn't even get things cheaper).

I really don't think you can negotiate with the volume builders unfortunately - they do claim that we are already getting a discounted price as they are buying in bulk so we aren't paying retail price for things.

Agree with sleven.

However, if you are making a change which is our of the ordinary and have some evidence of them charging someone else differently then you may be able to have them re-estimate the price for the change. They originally charged us about $1200 to remove all the walls of one room to open up the area... We knew someone else had done the same thing for about $400 so questioned them. In the end they charged us about $400 also.

You can only ask if you think specific items have been overestimated.

One aspect to negotiate is the price, but the second aspect is the contract specifics. One point is the liquidated damages by the builder if they fail to meet the anticipated completion date. Industry standard is $250, some big builders are only offering $200. With a smaller builder you can negotiate the damages payable and I have heard of $1,000 per week. Just some food for thought.