Finally found a buidler that we could trust and listens. We dealt with (i.e. Paid money) Comdain and Fasham before selecting Urbayne Homes. If you want to read some of the experience, look at the Background section below.
Urbayne Homes
Urbayne Homes are fantastic. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone. They are professional, patient and very flexible and are a boutique builder. Their display homes are ultra modern designs however they can adjust their designs to suit people that don't want the ultra modern look that is displayed.
I have just signed the contract with them and hope to start building in Mid / Late May.
Before meeting the team at Urbayne, I was frustrated and totally disenchanted with the whole industry. After dealing with Comdain and Fasham, they were like "the knight in shining armour".
The Background
We initially commenced our project in Feb 2008, anticipating that we would be in by early 2009. We started with Comdain homes and spent a smallish some of money to go through a very frustrating experience.
Comdain
This was a disappointing experience.
What we asked the guys at Comdain was if we could build a single storey 37sq home on our block. "Yes" they said and we started down the design path with them. After several months, we received our initial design which fell well short of the mark. The house was about 29sq and when I asked them about increasing the size of the home to 37sq as a single, they said it was not possible.
We then gave them a second chance and they redesigned a house (now 35sq!) that was a mixture of several display homes with no real cohesion / flow. It was a mediocre design and when they priced it they gave us a verbal price and told us to pay an additional $8k and to trust them that they would get the design right.
Fasham
Fasham would be the most unprofessional and disorganised company I have ever dealt with. I would never recommend them to anyone.
They DO NOT show any respect for your budget and here are a couple of things we experienced:
- They promised that an item will cost a certain amount, when you get the price back it is many times higher and when you delete the item, they only delete a certain % of another figure. e.g. When we asked about the price to add a SPA or a Bathtub, they said it was around $2.5k-$4k - in the initial design, we added a Bath. Subsequently, we removed the bath and the deletion price was $990. When I asked why the difference, they denied quoting such a figure. Unfortunately, I have many more examples of this....
- We did a review of the initial design (after paying a significant deposit for a hand sketch floor plan!) and the designer said these changes would cost a few hundred dollars - when we got a re-price, the price increased by $20k. When I asked how the price went up this much, they could not answer. It took them 3 weeks to get back to me on the reason! I then asked for a detailed spec to be resent again (as they did not provide this on the 2nd visit) and when I received it in the mail, the price had gone up by abother $3k. When I asked why, they did even now that they had increased the price and could not justify why.
That was obviously the last straw.
One other point, Fasham insist on contract signing prior to finalising design / specs / colour / selections which I do not believe is normal building practice.