Wisdom Homes WHY, WHAT, WHERE and HOW

Wisdom Homes, WHY
I work for Wisdom Homes and I'm hear to answer WHY, WHAT, WHERE and HOW.
This is for information only, I will not solicit sales or criticize other builders, but I will answer your building questions, respond to concerns and problems faced with building a new home!!!!
This is in response to all the questions asked about Wisdom, the good the bad and ugly. Believe it or not we do read these posts, including Product Review, and I feel alot of these are one sided responsed, don't get me wrong I understand there is a reason for a bad review but hopefully this will be a open forum that can review peoples concerns and address them before they become a great big ugly beast of a problem or a missed chance at a great home. I have been asked to join forums in the past and my computer skills have stopped me, now if you don't mind some miss spelled words and a day or two for a answer ask away. Most of the questions asked are about upgrades, building practices, will we fix problems, can we change things, why build with Wisdom Homes. Please refrain from bagging out other builder and if you do have a problem with Wisdom please ask away, just remember to be nice, I will be.

We are doing knockdown rebuild. I saw that wisdom has site costs included on its price list. How much is the site cost allowance for Manhatten 43 Bathroom?

We are doing knockdown rebuild. I saw that wisdom has site costs included on its price list. How much is the site cost allowance for Manhatten 43 Bathroom?


Hi,
All of our homes come with 1 meter equal cut and fill, if you have less than a meter of fall on your block it will be included in our cost, the thing to watch out for is the possiblity of drop edge beams which are required in most of the local councils DEB are used to contain fill and will incure addtional cost, I don't have cost break downs for site cost allowances but on average for a equal cut and fill you are looking under 20k.

Hey Colt,

Seems like not much activity is happening here!!

Anyway, to those reading, I can say that building with Wisdom so far was the best move we made (33% of the way there i reckon)!

Our build seems to be flying along (hope it continues) we had some initial small mix ups on our plans, although they are somewhat sorted now, which is excellent...

I do have a question...

Q. What is the maintenance period once our build is complete, and how long does it take to fix any issues we may have?

Cheers,

Nigel

Hi Nigel,
sorry for the late reply I was off for a while and just getting back into the swing of things.
We generally give you about 12 weeks to live in the house and find any issues, after the 12 weeks we will get you to give us a maintenance list and then we will start the required work, the thing to remember is you are now living in the house so we can't have tradesmen running around all day so it may take a few weeks or longer to finish up some of the maintenance issues. We try to work around your schedule, but tradies need days off too so weekends are generally not working days.
Was out by your house last week, it is coming along well.
Colt

Hi Colt,

Unfortunately my experience with Wisdom homes so far had been mixed. There are days were it was good...but now its mostly bad! My experience dont seem isolated based from perusing other forums. I currently lodged some issues with Wisdom and have not had any contact or response, and a substantial period of time have passed and we have not heard anything from Wisdom, none from the Sales people, customer service and even the GM, it feels like my issues are being ignored.

I am frustrated and the construction have not even started yet! I cannot go into details very much because it may get so bad that we have to cancel the contract.

All I am asking is for Wisdom's customer service to improve and for someone to contact their supposed clients and keep them up-to-date.

ADVICE to people:
Always get Wisdom to put in writing any 'promises' that they give you!

Hi Imprezzawrx
I can understand your frustrations, I know you can't go into much detail but if you don't mind PM me and I will see if I can help. I know sometimes you feel that you slipped through the cracks and you have been forgotten but it can be for a multitude of different reasons, we alway try and fix the problems but sometimes time is the problem. Let us see if we can fix things up and then get back on track. And I agree with you, which ever builder you use alway get the tender and prices in writting.
Don't give up we can get things worked out.
Colt

I am building with wisdom now, and will take up another project once I am done with this one, which is in a year's time.

We are building a Manhatten 43. My experience so far has been generally positive. They generally take 2 weeks if you want anything changed in the tender (even for dropping an item). That was a bit frustrating. I strongly suggest they improve this system. It just involves their tender guys to read an email (instruction) and delete an item. How difficult can that be? Is it more difficult than wasting your customer's two weeks of mortgage on the land?


I have been dealing with Andrew from oran park.

Hi Colt,

I would just like to ask a quick couple of question as I forgot to ask it when at head office the other day. How long would it take:
1. to get the tender back (we already have plans, DA approval, CC and demolition completed, we were about to start peg out when cosmopolitan went under)
2. for building to start considering we are ready to go?

I am a cosmopolitan refugee and I was greatly impressed with Wisdom Homes. The package and the patience of the manager who talked to me while my little girls trashed his office. Best first impressions I have had. Well Done and Thank you for your time

Hi arg277,
Sorry for my late reply and sorry you are having all those difficulties with the other builder. I wish I could tell you that we could start next week but we can't. We will have to provide you with a tender then you have to take it to the insurance company and they will compare it with a option of one of their nominated builders, if they approve of the tender (you need to like it too) we will get our insurances in and in place and change the construction certificate to us and then we will start the build. You are looking at about 2 months realistically for start of build and because of the holiday season you are adding another month, so if you start now build would be probably in late Feb.
Let me know if you want to get or if you want to bring in the plans and any of us can give you a good idea.
Best of luck with everything.
Colt

Thanks for the information Colt,
I am meeting with Wisdom on Friday.

Hi Colt,

Just want to know, I just got my council approval & now waiting for peg out (5 days turn around).
With kichen layout, I've just realised that I should ask for 700mm fridge depth instead of 650mm that Wisdom included. (i'm thinking to get double door fridge).
Do u think it's still possible to change it? Is there any cost involve?
Thanks, mate!

Hi Colt,
Just to advise that we got the 700mm fridge depth changes without any charge as per BP emails last week. Very happy about this, although it took them almost 2 months to answer me this.

But at the moment, am so not happy with Wisdom's progress in handling my paperwork/admin.
Fyi, on 24 Nov 2011 : Council approved our plan.
Then admin said they're waiting for waterboard, a week later was told it was rejected but didn't tell us what's the cause.
2nd week in Dec 2011 : was told couldn't make it for site cut that year but paperwork will be wrapped up in Dec & ready to go by mid Jan 2012 when you guys come back.
Fast forward to 18 Jan 2012 : was emailed the extra $5900 additional piering for rainwtr tank & also extra $$ for paperwork due to rainwatertank in zone of influence.
Was so upset cause Wisdom was the one who put that tank there, we requested to move it somewhere else to avoid ridiculous extra piering, and luckily the admin girl BP quickly organised the redrawing & waterboard approval came in 1 day.
Now Wisdom still can't give me when the siteworks will start. Apparently they still need 7 more days to determine for any additional cost for relocating watertank. Are they kidding me?? 7 more days?? Do they realize 1 week equal to $520 interest rate for us??
We weren't given the best rainwater tank location & now we have to pay extra $$ for these??

It's been 6-7 weeks (this is Not include Xmas break) now since our plan was approved by council & I think we are patient enough....
So , Please tell me, What should we do?

Hi Colt,
How much does it cost to have the ceilings without cornices for a 40 Sq Majestic design?

Hi,

We're currently building with Wisdom and it is giving us a HEADACHE.
It's already the 8th month of construction and the work is still NOT DONE. Sure, they do do the work but half the time the house is just there with nothing going on. Neighbouring houses that started construction 2 3 months after us are already moving in.
This is very very silly of us NOT noticing the Building Period is missing in the contract.

My question is, what is the normal Building Period and what actions can be taken if Wisdom goes over this period?

Hi All
We are also building with Wisdom and it's also giving us a HEADACHE.
I should of trusted product reviews website with all the negative reviews if you have noticed Wisdom have shut them out with legal threats.

We TOO were very very SILLY and it was very very CHEEKY of Wisdom to leave out the Building Period when we signed the Contract.

It's also coming to the 8th month of our construction during the Sales we got a schedule that says 26-30 weeks building period, that's 6 - 7 months so we are due past as well.

Half way through out construction we changed site supervisors and also noticed there is only tradies at work a few days a week.
I agree half the time nothing going on and blaming shortage of materials, but I think they just have too much work going on and not enough contractors to complete the work.

If you have the money and land size don't build with Wisdom sure they are cheaper and the house designs are more practical, but I think just the quality and professionalism of them is lacking. It took them weeks just to make a simple design change on the plans and they still got it wrong.

Hey guys we are planning to get our new home done with Wisdom at riverstone
is urs still under construction?

If you want to build on time and good quality get another tender with Clarendon, our neighbour started 1 month after us and they moved in one month before us, we moved in 3 weeks ago but they still need to complete the roofing on ours.