Our Fowler Homes Paris 34 - Jordan Springs

I have stalked everyone for a long time on here getting hints and tips and admiring everyone's beautiful homes! I have held off posting until we have been put into our construction phase.
Well it has finally happened after a lot of blood sweat and tears, our story so far:

Dec 14 Purchased a 12.5 metre wide 476m block at Jordan Springs

May 15 Land settled

Ran three tenders:
- Rawson Kempsy 30 (quick turnaround on Presentation request - took 2 weeks) March 2015
- Wisdom- Majestic 35 ( took 12 weeks to get a tender presentation!) May 2015
- Fowler - Paris 34 ( had a free tender shop a docket and I liked one of their PARIS design so requested this as a comparison to Wisdoms took 2 weeks to get the appt) we had this the same day as the wisdom tender.

Chose wisdom after liking the design a little more than fowler (mainly my husbands choice here) and RAwson was too expensive for the size.

31 May 15 -Paid the remaining $4 K to wisdom After already paying the $1k for the tender which put us in the contract/ plan pre construction phase.

Colour selection appointments in the weeks that followed

31 July 2015 - plans drawn up and an unsigned contract supplied to the bank. With all upgrades from selection appointments included.Bank approves pending amendments to progressive payments schedule as they were way too front end of the build heavy!

10 August 2015- proposed payment schedule rejected by Wisdom and then weeks of back and forth between various members of bank, broker and builder to no avail. We gave up after exhausting all avenues in early September 2015

3 September 2015- called fowler asked if tender was still valid and if they could provide the bank what they wanted re progress payments. Had an answer back within two hours with an email confirmation from fowler to my broker saying yes, that was no problem!

8 September- advised no part of monies paid to wisdom would be refunded. Paid the 3k to fowler to start drafting plans

23 October final plans signed off and 12k paid to go to pre construction.

24 November - submitted to council (unfortunately couldn't go CDC)

January 2016 - various selection appointments

25 February- council approval finally (Penrith council)

14 March - construction certificate issued

21 March contract finalised. After reviewing and negotiations, signed 24 March

28 March- all docs and signed contract by builder provided to broker

8 April - file submitted to fowler estimating team to move to construction -20 working days as given in contract for them to start the build.

So far Fowler have been perfect, cannot fault them. Staff are absolutely amazing and efficient, selection options, upgrades and inclusions are fabulous and are FAR BETTER than Wisdom after actually going through the full process with both.

I cannot express my disappointment in Wisdom homes and warn people to be very careful with progress payments and banks, get what you need in writing from both bank and builder before you invest any time or money with them ( or with any builder for that matter) this is especially important if you are a first home owner! My disappointment has been reinforced now that they have finally decided to bend to the banks requests to amend and are apparently now giving people what we had requested and lost a lot of time and money on last year in August. Classic case of the little people getting squashed In a bit of corporate argy bargy between the bank and the builder...glad the little people eventually came out on top, but sorry we were road kill in the meantime!

For those of you reading this considering Fowler- I highly recommend them from my experience thus far.

Estimated build start date is set for the 9th of May.

Plans. Only amended ensuite and powder room from original plans.

I'm impressed you went to three companies up front to compare prices.
Sorry to hear your bad experiences with Wisdom. Looks like you're onto something great now with Fowler though. That will be a blessing once you get to site I'm sure

Fowler build beautiful homes! Looking forward to following your build!

Sorry to hear about the trouble with Wisdom, can imagine that was pretty stressful.
My experience with Fowler so far have been REALLY good, the colour selections with the girls in Sydney was great.
We are onsite now, slab going down tomorrow/Tuesday.
Since we got to site with our SS i think it has gotten even better, the block levelling were brought forward a day and the slab by a few days.
Here's to hoping the trend continues! And for you aswell.

Hi we were looking at building with Rawson or allcastle double story 5 bedrooms do you mind me asking how much Fowlers tender is?? Maybe another company we should into?? If you don't want to say on here can pm me or I understand if you don't want to say at all thanks

Hi there, Fowler are definitely worth a look at, cheapest out of the three we ran tenders with after all the inclusions and up grades we would have completed with the others. I am not sure what the prices are now, but as at May last year our tender for Paris 34 came in at $375,000 that was with drop edge beam on zero lot and h class slab. We have spent an extra 20 k on upgrades - mainly on kitchen, after the initial tender price - be aware that butlers pantries have pretty much nothing in them other than shelves/ bench so if you want them fitted out with cupboards ect, you will have to pay for them!
Paid $3500 for flyscreens and blinds on all windows and doors, 2500 on electrical, 500 on a timber look garage door, about 1k on floors and then various other bits and bobs like bigger sink in kitchen, bigger bath tub, rainwater shower head( way cheaper than wisdom by the way!) two colours in the painting the full house... I think that was it from memory. Did not have to pay for things like fit out under stairs, mirrored sliding wardrobe doors, Sydney cove cornice, high ceilings downstairs.

Well worth giving them a call after checking out their designs and picking a couple to ask for the prices on and then go from there.
I had minimal contact with the sales rep and most was completed over email.

Hope this helps!

Thanks so much for that will definately go and and see them, we are building on the central coast so fingers crossed they build up here!! We were hoping to keep build under $400000 but with prices going up all the time and wanting all the upgrades I think we will be pushing it lol

Great to hear you are having a smooth build with Fowler.
We are also building the Paris 34 but with an attached 2 bed granny flat for investment. Our process was much slower than yours as we had too many changes and this was a knockdown rebuild and had trouble with demolition crew.
We are also at slab stage and waiting for frames to be delivered this week.
It looks like we have the same facade as yours too, the Affinity....
What bricks did you select? Hope it all continues to go well for you.

Hi Rayges, so exciting to see someone else building the Paris!! You'll have to make sure you post some progress pictures, we'll be not too far behind you. Haven't gone to site yet, but should happen within 2 weeks. I love the affinity facade, good value for a facade with a balcony!
We went with the blackberry brick from austral (by far the hardest decision apart from the actual builder and house design). If I can find the external colour selections sheet I'll upload it. What bricks did you go with?
Did you make many changes to your kitchen? This was a hard decision for us and I'm pretty happy with the final result but second guessing our colour selection. For the upper cupboards - went with white, black splash back, white Stone and gunmetal lower cupboards - thinking that we should have stuck with our first choice with black matte looking upper cupboards instead of the White.

Yeah I know what you mean KP16.... You are the first person I have found that is building the exact same house and facade as ours. Couldn't believe it.... I just can't wait till we can actually see it all come together.
We chose the Metallix Bronze brick which is an upgrade, our 2nd choice was the Blackberry. Lol.
My wife chose the kitchen which is white cupboards and white splashbacks and Clamshell ceaserstone, which is a greyish tone which matches our concrete looking floor tiles...clean look. We are going to colour it up with the modern copper pendant lights and coloured wooden stools.....my wife has it all on the pc ready to go.
We chose our colours nearly 10 months ago and we are always second guessing what we chose, because we always go to Homeworld and other display homes and wish we chose this or that - I just want our house built already. Haha.
How do you upload pictures on this site?
I'm on the iPad....

This is where we are up to with our Paris 34. How is yours all going?

Wow!! So exciting looks great.
We had a bit of slow start, build supposed to start May 9, we got there just this last week.
Wednesday site scraped and Friday piering completed.

That's great to hear that there is some activity going on.
My place is moving slowly as well. The chippies have only been on site for 3 days out of 2 weeks, but gees they do a lot while they are there. I'm hoping activity can be 5 days a week instead of 2 days a week.

Hey KP16, have you got a slab yet?

We have!! Three weeks it has been laid for now, Although no action since then, frames delivered a week and a half ago, but apparently a shortage a carpenters to put them up, hopefully it will start again this week. How's yours going?

YAYYY!!! I remember how excited we were when our slab was finally down. You watch when the frames go up they'll finish it in a few days as they are so quick. Mine happened in a few days but over a 3 week period because they only came in a day here and there, so yes there is a shortage of chippies and brickies....
We had 2 weeks of sunshine and the brickies decided to come on Friday for half a day and then go home cause it showered. ....and now this huge rain that's supposed to hit us today will delay even further now... Oh well, I'm still very excited for you and your Paris 34.
This is what they did on Friday:

Hello KP16, how is my fellow Paris 34 build progressing?
Are the frames up yet?
Ray.

Frames are up finally! Went up really quick, just waiting on the windows now then the first of the colour choices- the bricks!! Can't wait to see what they look like. Had a walk through the other day and gosh it seems big, especially the door and hallway.