Hi there. I have been reading this forum for a while now and found the answer to so many questions I've had - so thanks.
We have bought a block of land (about four months ago) but had not planned to build for 18 months. That was the plan but now we are kind of wanting to jump in.
We have been looking at a couple of builders mainly Coral and Arden Vale. We have pretty specific wants though so it is a bit difficult.
Our block is just over 15 metres wide and 40 metres deep so quite narrow.
The thing is that we are both new to the whole building thing and we are worried about the builders taking advantage of our naivety.
We don't even know what we are supposed to do next. Should we be able to get a good indication of price before we commit to a builder or is the best they give you their base price.
One of the builders said that they knew our block and that site costs would probably be about $20,000 (until yesterday that was the only house plan that came close to what we wanted). Yesterday we decided to go see the builder that has built all three of the other houses near our block, he did some extreme modifications to a plan and it is really growing on us. He said that based on the block to the right of us (which has exactly the same slope as ours) and the other two accross the road he expected the soil to be H1 or H2 and that the site costs would be $4000 - $7500.
That is a huge difference in price between the two builders and almost the same amount as price difference between the two base prices, ie lower base price - higher site costs and vice versa. The two houses are about the same size.
I have heaps more to mention but I will leave it at that for now.
Any feedback would be welcomed.
thank you, Lee