Porter Davis price increase

What you are experiencing is a boom bust cycle, this is what Perth went through several years ago
1. Where prices went up 1-2 % every month
2. Battlers & Punters were spooked into Signing new home contract
3. Shortage of material & labour caused delays and price hikes
4. Builders over extended, some went belly up and the majority put slabs down and just waited..for trades to become available & rates to drop.in order to complete projects.
5 New houses peaked and have since dropped 15-20%, in some areas more
6. The smart money is on wait for the correction, buy cheap and renovate...you'll save heaps..goodluck
Perth house price bust: What can Sydney and Melbourne learn from the west?
This article is only half of the story..

You're absolutely KIDDING me if you're comparing Perth to Melbourne and Sydney lol

They are entirely different markets driven by different factors.

I appreciate there are definitely booms and busts in all markets, but to say that Melbourne & Sydney will replicate what happened to Perth is ignorant.

May as well compare Australian house prices to USA... forget that we a different financial system, foreign investment governance and different tax laws which all play a pivotal role in house prices.

Perth's crash however was largely related to the ending of the significant mining boom. Mining was a big reason the area boomed and prices soared, once the boom was over there wasn't as many reasons for people to stay and people couldn't afford to live there anymore so there was a property collapse.

Sydney and Melbourne are vastly different markets with different reasons for growth and boom although I believe markets will see a plateau and a potential minor decrease in price I don't agree we are going to see the massive crash everyone believes AND even if we do see a crash it's houses in the upper percentile that will see the major loses back down to what people believe they are worth.

Just my 2 cents though could be vastly wrong.

Cheltsider welcome to the forum
Yes the House prices do vary on the design complexity, size and believe it or not "Location"
Most builders estimate the cost to build and then schedule the build prior to the start..there are many factors that influence the scheduled price engineering for one.
Check your standard contract..here in perth if there are any delays which aren't the builders fault, time delays in accessing the site, Material delays & shortages, etc,etc, then they can ask for a price increase. Your choice is then to accept them or pull out.
Either way Houses will take years to build.

That doesn't make sense?
Builders experience the same pricing pressures and they choose to put up the prices when it suits them, they may hold off monthly increase for quarterly...If they have not commenced on site within 12 months expect a 12 month price increase
Alternatively, expect a lot of excuses for site delays, but you will still get the price whack.

I would expect builders to put up pricing minimum of 12 months. PD email sounds like a scare email to get people to sign on their books so they can have some sort of commitments of builds going forward. Its a very competitive market and there are a lot of builds happening at the moment.

I remember when we were first looking at PD (as I loved their designs) not so much their pricing and they wanted us to put a deposit down with the spiel that prices were increasing in the new financial year. We didn't.

I would be wary committing to any building contract or deposit whereby you had penalty clauses (which some I read are very heavy per month if you don't commence building after certain time) when your land isn't titled or months or over a year away from being tilted. I know in Victoria there is a lot of building happening and all parts of the process are flat out so expect some delays due to this and maybe factor it in.

Trades get paid the same rates irrespective of the builders size. If I am not working next month I will consider dropping my rates. Large builders get bigger manufacturers rebates but they rarely get passed on to the consumer.
I would say your balcony price was a stuff up.. 60% increase is nonsense that can't be blamed on labour and material increases, it sounds like the salesman, estimator, or someone make an error
What you will find larger Builders doing now is loading their order books while waiting for rates to drop. BTW those builds will take years to build. This is exactly what happen in perth, during the last boom cycle