Browse Forums Building A New House Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 2Apr 03, 2009 10:44 am hrmz, that's strange! I have a fixed site cost, but still had tender because there were extras and upgrades which I wanted quoted up. Is that what you mean? Idiots are fun, that's why there is one in every village! - Dr. House - Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 3Apr 03, 2009 10:46 am who are you building with? i would have thought that tender stage is necessary all the time. we signed off on tender for our house so the plans could be submitted to council. once plans were approved we went to contract stage. Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 4Apr 03, 2009 10:49 am No I have not heard of that. A tender is a presentation of the breakdown of costs of the site costs through to the build and appliances inclusions etc. So in order for you to select the builder, he must estimate all of that and present it to you in a tender. Its important that you get as detailed a breakdown as you can because if things go wrong during the building, you can refer back to his base costs. Then you begin to haggle on variations. Let’s say that the builder gets to the footings for the slab and finds rock, way way down under the ground. That could be the difference between him using a 3 ton or a 20 ton kato /excavator and drills. How can he then charge you extra for what he did not know was there, if you don't know how much he allowed for that work in the first place? If he is giving you a lump sum figure and says that this will cover all changes, alterations, and small surprises in the building process, then he is either (to put it plainly) stupid or inexperienced. Either way, I would find someone else. Good luck Pinkladyloo Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 5Apr 03, 2009 10:53 am exactly, all charges should be provided in your tender document. when you sign up, you sign up for the base price of the house. once you pick inclusions, colours, facades, internal upgrades, etc these are all priced in the tender document. the contract document mainly contains the final drawings and final costs. Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 6Apr 03, 2009 11:32 am I have the tender document which includes all the upgrades, but it still have some errors. I also want to change a few things here and there. A friend told me that he had a tender appointment and spent more than 3 hours to finalise all changes. Then he had a contract appointment where he signed the contract. When I asked for a tender appointment to fix errors and add changes the above, plus to explain the content of the tender document, I was told that it can be done through email. Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 7Apr 03, 2009 11:39 am We didn't have a tender - online our file is marked "straight to contract". Our salesman did a quote, we signed a sales authorisation and then went to colour and electrical appointments whilst our plans were being drawn up. We then attended a contract signing appointment. Our land wasn't titled but they were able to take soil samples and the plans that we had of the estate showed the fall and the cut/fill areas so the site costs were pretty straight forward. I guess because we didn't make any major structural changes - only switched a door with a window and added a roller door to the rear of the garage - it was possible to bypass the tender stage. The salesman's quote was also pretty spot on and was padded enough that by the time we made our colour and electrical selections we ended up only $1000 more than his quote. Having said that we stuck with standard options in most cases. Our electricals came in about $1000 and our colour options/upgrades would have been about the same. All up from signing the sales advice to signing of contracts was about 8 weeks. They were fast tracking us for a january start initially, which got pushed back to Feb by the time we signed the contract. My blog: http://artstitcheshome.blogspot.com Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 8Apr 03, 2009 11:46 am 3win I have the tender document which includes all the upgrades, but it still have some errors. I also want to change a few things here and there. A friend told me that he had a tender appointment and spent more than 3 hours to finalise all changes. Then he had a contract appointment where he signed the contract. When I asked for a tender appointment to fix errors and add changes the above, plus to explain the content of the tender document, I was told that it can be done through email. I went for my tender appointment, spent a few hours there going through the tender with the office staff. At the end, we had to take it home and look over everything as we werent prepared to sign it until we were sure its everything we wanted. Also, there were items which we had asked for a quote which wasnt on the tender. Later, we emailed them to tell them what quotes we wanted added, and they would amend the contract and email it back to us. So i guess you can do it by email, altho you will need to be there when its finalised as you will need to sign the tender document. Idiots are fun, that's why there is one in every village! - Dr. House - Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 9Apr 03, 2009 11:50 am Hi 3win, We skipped tender stage and went straight to contract and will never do it again or recommend it ! When we went for our contract signing the price was way off from our quote and we had to refuse to sign. Took 7 days of frantic emailing and phone calls to fix it all and that too cos we had a very competent and helpful CSO. We were told that the builder is "honoring" the errors in the quote. All in all the experience was quite frustrating... i would recommend thats you arrange for a tender appointment or be prepared to walk away. Land Settled 27/04/09. Site Started 30/4/09. Slab poured 21/5/09. Frame up 27/5/09. Building thread : viewtopic.php?f=31&t=15699 Re: No tender because choosing fixed site cost? 10Apr 03, 2009 11:58 am jessica Hi 3win, We skipped tender stage and went straight to contract and will never do it again or recommend it ! When we went for our contract signing the price was way off from our quote and we had to refuse to sign. Took 7 days of frantic emailing and phone calls to fix it all and that too cos we had a very competent and helpful CSO. We were told that the builder is "honoring" the errors in the quote. All in all the experience was quite frustrating... i would recommend thats you arrange for a tender appointment or be prepared to walk away. I wouldn't have done it (gone straight to contract) if it weren't for the fact that we knew we were sticking with standard options and didn't make changes to the plans. I was so nervous going into our contract appointment because I was scared that the site costs might have increased or that the few upgrades we made might have pushed the cost up. They left us in the office with our contract so that we could have a read through and the first thing that I did was to turn to the $$ page to see how it had turned out. When we started this whole process I didn't know anything about the process and so didn't realise that what we were doing was any different to what everyone else does... My blog: http://artstitcheshome.blogspot.com Thank you so much everyone. This all makes a lot of sense. 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