has anyone built with burbank.

This has most probably been asked before, but any information would be great.

Thanks

I'm not building with them, but a friend currently is, and has so far had a terrible time, unfortunately - a lot of misinformation and unhelpfulness. Mind you, I'm sure there are others out there who have had a positive experience!

I'm trying to get them to build me a Rochester, but I'm having problems with how slow they are. I paid a deposit at the end of March, signed off on the placement of the house mid April, settled the land mid May and I'm still waiting for them to contact me about colour/electrical appointments and so far as I know they haven't even produced drawings yet. I asked for a price on double glazing in April and I'm still waiting for a reply.

I'm sending them an email of complaint today but I'm seriously considering foregoing my deposit and going elsewhere.

Neil

We are currently building through Burbank......building the Camellia 2900.

Process so far has been very slow getting them started. We settled on our land in May.......and they just started last week.

We have now had site excavation last week, set out yesterday and plumbing & electricals done today. We were hoping to see a slab by the weekend.....but not sure if that is going to happen.

Customer service to begin with was pretty slow and we weren't happy, my husband got on their back and now they are alot more helpful.......

If you plan on building with them you are going to have to push them.......pretty much every step of the way we are thinking at this point.

Have not been happy with them before construction began.......lets hope that now that construction has begun they get their foot out of their a***!!!!!

Hope this helps!!!!

Did they give you an indication of build time? I have been quoted 6 months, but they are doing a whole bunch of them in a row so that may affect things?

We were just recently told that according to their contracts they allow themselves 230 days from the pouring of the slab. They can't give us any indication of an exact date just how long they allow themselves.

Although the girl that we speak to now said they have a few they are doing now that are taking 3.5 - 4.5 months for completion. But that they can't guarantee it will only take that long for us, it also depends on delays due to having everything in stock etc. if it isn't in stock, or discontinued then they have to get you back in to rechoose things and that all takes up time too.........we're just hoping no delays!!!!!!!

But just so that you know.......at the moment we have had site excavation 1 week, plumbing etc 1 week, slab 1 week, and now frame this week which was started on Tuesday and should be done.

we thought about it buit the CSR was pretty rude to us so my husband rules them out on that basis.

Keep in mind you are likely to hear good an bad reporets about any builder, and everyones experience is different.

We are Building with Burbank in Nunawading and we signed the customer registration in October last year, picked our colours in December-Demolished our House in December(after being told by Burbank to demolish as soon as possible) and they laid the slab on the 12 June!!!!
I am speechless -this has taken to long.........

Would anyone volunteer their cost break up for building with Burbank?

i.e. 5% on signing, 10% at slab etc?

I'm organising finance and would like to know what sort of interest I would be up for over the period the house is not built. I don't like the sound of having land just sitting there settled, and waiting for them to build.

It is illegal for a builder to demand more than 5% as a deposit, so that is the maximum you should pay on signing.

I knew that, but still if I have $130k worth of land sitting + say $20k of deposit there that's worth 15k a year in interest payments until they get off their butt and do something. If we could charge that interest to the builder I believe most builders would be a lot quicker!

That's true ... we're 3 months behind schedule for site start (different builder, and all their fault ), so far it has cost me $4,000 in interest on the land

And THAT would be the friend I waas referring to!!!!!!!!!!!!! LOL!, Danielle!!!

We are building with Burbank, or are about to rather. Here is our cost breakup:-

Deposit - 5%
Slab - 10%
Frame - 15%
Lockup - 25%
Fix-Out - 35%
Hand Over - 10%

So far we have found them to be quite un-organised, although we are very organised so we have just kept pushing them and everything seems to be going ok, although we havnt actually started building yet.

If you do consider building with them, get estimates for ALL your variations before you put your file and and keep a record of them. Our tender came back $10,000 more than we had estimated as they had charged more for everyvariation that they initially told us. We argued it as we had all the estimates on e-mail and they honored all the original estimates.

The above advice would be for anyone, not just Burbank clients. List all the changes you want, get prices first, get ball-park figures for cat 2+ fittings and upgrades, then when your tender comes back it's not quite as much of a shock.

Thank you... it seems that way to me also, I have had unanswered emails from a month ago... but then again I'm not so pushy as I've only a small deposit (2k) down on the land. I'm also questioning their build costs though - a 15sq town house apartment costs 240k to build, yet their 20sq one with less fittings (bigger open areas) costs 100k more!

We're currently buiding with B'bank. I must admit the beginning of it was a bit slow, part of it is due to the delay in demolishing the existing house on the block which we had to arrange. But we are surprised after the buidling process commences, everything has been going super fast, we had lock up in just 2.5 months, and there were only minor issues witht the pre-plaster inspection (brickwork is yet to be inspected).

Our CSR is replying to very single email we sent promptly and our SS is also seem to be on top of things.

I guess it all really depends on the person that execute the work more than the reputation of the company.

So far so good for us.....knock wood.... everything will be Ok all the way

Our payment break-down is slightly different, we pay 35% on lock up and 25% on fixing stage

I wouldn't be surprised if our is wrong. We were given that breakup by the salesperson last year - it wouldn't be the first thing we were told incorrect.

What house are you building? We're building a Stoneleigh.

Yep we also had a few minor amendments along the way, mostly drafting error on the drawing on measurement, nothing major... My suggestion, forget what the sales person have told you, they need to be more resourceful

We're building the Gerbera 28. Have you guys started building?

We're due to start in September, we're just ironing out the details at the moment.

I know what you mean about the salespeople. A good tip for anyone starting out is to do what we did, we pretty much made all our specs choices and changes well before we put the official file in. Each time we wanted to change something we e-mailed the salesperson to get a quote. That way, when we put the file in we were confident that we wouldn't have any nasty surprises. Suffice it to say that when the first tender came back it was $10k more than we expected.

Anyway, long story short - we had kept all the e-mails back and forth requesting prices, so when the tender prices came back much higher, we wrote a huge e-mail addressing every discrepancy and referenced back to the e-mails with estimates on. I have to say this for Burbank, fair play to them as they honoured every price except two - and those two had been given to us as allowances anyway, so we couldn't argue there.

We are pleased with what we are getting from Burbank, and the level of service, and we have enjoyed the process so far - but I have hounded them all the way to make sure our things get looked at etc. They must think I am a right pest.