Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Nov 02, 2008 1:48 pm Hi All, this is my first post here, I stumbled across this site when I was looking for info about footing costs.
We are building a modified version of "the Florence" by Fairmont, we are demolishing our current house and a contingency of $15,000 was in our initial contract BUT on Friday we received the variation and instead of $15,000 is was $30,000 we just about had a coronary , as well as that there is mention of retaining walls needed because of trees on adjoining properties, we are endeavoring to get an answer from our consultant on who much extra this could all cost, we are starting to get worried that the house is going to cost more than we can afford if we get too many "surprises" like this one. Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 2Nov 02, 2008 8:14 pm Hi vid,
I have unfortunately shared that exact same experience. We're building with Hickinbotham (well, Statesman actually), and our original quote for footings was $15K. Mind you, our house is a three level split, but they knew it was a split level when we signed up. Our sales consultant assured us that no-one's footings have come to that much in our particular development, but sure enough it ended up being $30K . Of course, we had to sign a contract and pay a deposit before they let us know how grossly underquoted we were Bad way of doing business, but not uncommon unfortunately. Luckily we had a large surplus at the time, but it was still not nice. I am not sure if Fairmont operate the same way, but Hickinbotham made sure they ate up every last bit of surplus in the way of variations, right up until our house was released to construction In the way of retaining, we paid $10k and it also included earthworks and dirt removal. They did the lot all at once. Had we done it separately (their stuff up, our benefit) it would have been more. Our friends did it all through an independant person so don't feel like you have to get it all done through them, as it can often end up more expensive that way. Fairmont is a South Aust builder I think, are you in SA? Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 3Nov 02, 2008 8:38 pm As an Architect I'm just dumb founded by such cost escalations and/or underquoting, If only people would seek expert advice from either an experienced building designer or architect then alot of these cost blow outs can be either avoided or atleast the project quoted properly before you sign any building agreement but unfortunetly the home onwners continue to believe the sales consultants that encourage the public to enter into poor building contracts with volume builders who have to offer cut throat prices to get the job and then deal with cost escalation afterwards with the client. Its sad that this seems to happen so often in this forum, I wish these builders can be accountable for their poor underquoting or missinformation (lack of usually) Keep the pressure on them and make a big deal about it with them, but your limited by your contract conditions.
good luck. Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 4Nov 02, 2008 9:18 pm Dakis As an Architect I'm just dumb founded by such cost escalations and/or underquoting, Its sad that this seems to happen so often in this forum, I wish these builders can be accountable for their poor underquoting or missinformation (lack of usually) Keep the pressure on them and make a big deal about it with them, but your limited by your contract conditions. good luck. I thought there were penalties for under quoting. The HIA contract talks about a 'fair and reasonable estimate" that is obtained with "reasonable care" Are they allowed to proceed with the work without permission and then charge for it. Are you obligated to pay for it? Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 5Nov 02, 2008 9:19 pm Thanks for the reply Tamsin,
Yes we are in SA, we are knocking down our old house and rebuilding, "apparently" it's cosing more because our block slopes to the rear (although you would never know it) and needs to import soil and then pier through that loose soil to support the slab, we also have trees affecting the footing on neighboring properties. Dakis, We allocated in our budget an extra $5000 for the footings as our consultant "who has been very good" said that that would be quite realistic. We really thought we had crossed our T's and dotted our I's as we have been going through this process with Fairmont since January. Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 6Nov 02, 2008 9:53 pm Yes very unfortunate, just when you thought all is ok they spring this on you, sad but its happened now. Normally +15% is normal for extras on a provisional sum in contract but they most likely worded the provisional sum differently as they may of known that a blow out of double would not be considered fair and reasonable. Check all invoices and donot proceed with payment until all has been checked. They cannot force you to pay unless there is something in the contract that overides it. i would seriously spend few hundred dollars on a building consultant to check everything and guide you on analyzing the extra costs which in my experience are usually negotiable to acheive an amiacable result.
by the way, importing soil to suit the slab ! What a poor design solution. No doubt someone must of said it was the lowest cost solution !! how wrong if thats the case, once again all this would of been on the drawings and you could of known before signing any building contract. It would of taken just a few minutes to see on the drawings and engineering the amount of work to be done. I'll be now asking whats going to support all the soil and exact positions for any retaining walls, type of wall design, aggy drain positions, steps, finished levels, dimensions of terraced areas etc. incase these lead to extra costs in future not accounted for in contract. wish I could help with looking at all your drawings but might not be possible. Let me know if there is any advice I can give via this forum Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 8Nov 06, 2008 10:23 pm I had a meeting with the builder yesterday and had it explained to me where most of the extras come in, much of it is because of neighbours (and council) trees and also because they will not know exactly what they will be faced with until our old house is demolished and the trenching is completed, which means we have double meshing and 100mm more concrete in most of the slab, apparently this is the "worst case scenario" and there is a small likelihood this amount could be reduced. But I won't hold my breath!
We could save money if ALL trees concerned were removed, but 1 is a very large one in a neighbours and the other in on the nature strip so the chance is "buckleys" Re: Building with Fairmont footings cost blowout 10Jun 14, 2009 5:41 pm Hi Vid, we had a similar experience building with M in Melbourne. We also did a demolition and had a few surrounding trees. But our additional site costs were because we supposedly had clay and silty soil that needed 29 screw piles, also had cut and fill costs and double handling costs due to "lack of access on block" etc etc. Our site costs went from $23k in the preliminary contract to $30k in the final contract due to all this-we were very unhappy but ended up paying it when we couldn't find another house we liked and consulted a few people about likely site costs for our area and they thought it was "about right". custom probably not. Volume, most defiantly, but spec would vary. If youre doing a knock down, there additional costs associated with that that will eat into your budget… 1 10276 multiple occ properties are always billed by trades at a premium, rarely per sqm for the lot. You either have trades you know whoe will do by sqm or youre going to get… 1 2237 2 3001 |