Kerdels

Hi,
I am new to this forum and just wondered if anyone has built with Kerdels ???

We used Home Builders Advantage and Kerdels came out the best during tendering, but since signing up with them things seem to have gone down hill, so much so that we are thinking of walking away !!!

I am devastated, we moved into our renatl 8 months ago and thought we would have least had a slab by now and with only 4 months left on the lease panic is starting to set in.

Thanks

Hi meli,

I don't make specific comments about any builders on here, but just keep in mind that if you do pull out of building with them and you have already signed a contract, you could possibly be up for a decent cost. Depending on how far you have gone through the process, you may only lose your deposit. However if you're at the end of admin and you've given the builder your finance approval already, they could end up charging you an extra $15-30k on top of the deposit (for work completed and loss of profit). But as I said, all of that is only applicable if you've given them finance approval. Worst case scenario the builder is legally permitted to force you to build anyway, because you have signed a binding contract to build and proven you have the finance to do it.

And yes, many years of working in the industry means I have seen the above happen too many times...

Best of luck with your decision.

I have just finished a build with Kerdels

I wont go over it again here, but search these forums for "Kerdels" and you will see some of the issues I and others have had. I will say though ensure you check your plans thoroughly and put everything in writing to them. If it is a custom build be very wary as I had over 70 drafting errors in my plans that I had to get fixed.

I wish you the best of luck and I hope it goes better than mine but from the sound of it you may be in for a rough ride.

hey meli,
there are a few of us on here building with kerdels.
we have all had issues, but you will get that with a lot of builders. once we finally got thru the paperwork stage, the build part has been quick, but has come to a bit of a halt again, we are nearly at lock up, but have been halted that way for just over a month. i will add that i am semi-rural, so that may factor in a bit. and i will add that the quality of our build so far has been great. feel free to check out my thread

We also used HBA and went with Kerdels and our comments?

Overall: Experience to date with Kerdels has been absolutely traumatic. Signed contract July 2011, still no slab. Their administration is shocking, no action until you seriously hassle them and complain, no communication within their admin team, the Director does very little to restore faith in their ability to deliver. Even with our rantings, the service has still been dismal. Numerous errors on errors in their pricing, spent hours going over every detail finding more errors. We had to hassle them 15th Dec to even submit plans to Council and then they weren't able to secure a building licence as they had exceeded their insurance quota's and had to wait for other handovers until they could. But were they honest? No they indicated mid Jan Council needed insurance, delayed the process by not contacting neighbours quickly for their comments (we personally followed up neighbours to speed up process) and by mid Feb, still no insurance in place until we gave them a week to provide or we walked! How I wish we had walked anyway. Now March and who knows when we will have a slab. We are now seeking legal advice to see if we can have our 6.5% deposit and find another builder. And they asked for the deposit when legally, this should not have been requested and paid until they could provide insurance.
Both husband and wife devastated with this very stressful experience.
DON'T BUILD WITH THEM - THEY ARE TERRIBLE!