Browse Forums General Discussion 1 May 04, 2015 3:30 pm Has anyone taken the long approach to choosing a builder? Our land probably won't be ready until mid-June and my husband refuses to choose a builder until we can stand on the land. There is a 1m fall across the block so he wants to wait to get a quote until after we have had an independent engineer look at it first. Is this common practise or does everyone rush out and book their builder as soon as they have paid a deposit? Re: Waiting For Land To Be Ready Before Choosing A Builder 2May 04, 2015 3:40 pm We decided to bite the bullet and sign up Dec 14. We bought the land in Aug 14 and it should be registered anytime from June onwards. We locked our price in for 12 months we figured most builders put the prices up every few months so even if our site isn't that level we would probably still end up in front. Re: Waiting For Land To Be Ready Before Choosing A Builder 3May 04, 2015 11:02 pm Hey 1st-timers, welcome to the forum I don't know if it's common practise or not but we certainly didn't rush out and book a builder. There is lots to consider and having as much information as possible is a great start. If there is no hurry to start and your want to stand on the land first then do it that way. There is no right way for everyone, just your way. For what it's worth we've had our block for over 12 months and our build only started in April. Good luck Custom build Northern NSW viewtopic.php?f=31&t=72217 Re: Waiting For Land To Be Ready Before Choosing A Builder 4May 05, 2015 8:10 am bradles We decided to bite the bullet and sign up Dec 14. We bought the land in Aug 14 and it should be registered anytime from June onwards. We locked our price in for 12 months we figured most builders put the prices up every few months so even if our site isn't that level we would probably still end up in front. The short period these quotes seem to be valid for was one of the concerns we had as well. I didn't know you could lock in a quote so thanks for that. Re: Waiting For Land To Be Ready Before Choosing A Builder 5May 05, 2015 8:14 am TraceyWayne Hey 1st-timers, welcome to the forum I don't know if it's common practise or not but we certainly didn't rush out and book a builder. There is lots to consider and having as much information as possible is a great start. If there is no hurry to start and your want to stand on the land first then do it that way. There is no right way for everyone, just your way. For what it's worth we've had our block for over 12 months and our build only started in April. Good luck Thanks for that. He really does want to hold off even to the point of seeing what sort of houses our neighbours will be building before committing ourselves to a design. Re: Waiting For Land To Be Ready Before Choosing A Builder 6May 05, 2015 8:34 am Hi, I wouldn't worry about the houses your neighbours are building. You have to be happy with your house, not how it 'fits' (or not) with the neighbours. You will probably find that most people are building quite modern looking houses (vs. traditional/Victorian style) anyway. Picking a builder: do you know what you want in a house? Or not want? For example, do you definitely want a theatre room? Or not want one? Do you want an undercover outdoor area? At the back? At the side? When considering who to build with, my husband and I figured we would go with the builder who had the floorplan we wanted. Finding he right floor plan, and modifying it slightly if needed, is much cheaper than finding a builder and getting them to build a custom plan. We knew that we didn't want the following: Front living area that wouldn't get used Theatre room We knew we did want: one storey large undercover alfresco large open plan living area decent sized kitchen a fair amount of storage rumpus room ("man cave") So, we then took our time to go through all of the builder's websites and looked at all of their floorplans. The ones that met our criteria we wrote down, and after going through all the sites we went back to our list and printed out each of the floor plans. Believe it or not, there were only seven! Having them side by side, we were able to compare them all and narrowed it down to three pretty quickly. We then went and looked at these display homes and made our decision quite easily as to which we preferred. As a result, we found our builder. Hope this helps!! My blog: tashandpaul.wordpress.com Use a product like Equisol's Vitalise to clean the deck then coat with a penetrating timber oil. It will look 10 years younger and add value to your home. Visit for… 1 15794 Ardo That is so funny! I wonder how many people know who Larry Haun is these days. I have a couple of young guys we call Mo 1 & Mo 2 who run a crew of 6 boys and… 9 15518 You should check your detail drawings, it may show downpipe within brick pier. 14 14099 |