Hi Everyone,
I'm glad to resume my activity on the forum. It has been a while since I was complaining here about Clarendon tender process, slowness with it, lots of mistakes and a terrible customer service their tender presenter was delivering.
Thanks for this community that helped to clarify many questions so I feel obliged to contribute hoping my experience will be helpful to others.
A short chronology, lessons learned and other useful stuff:
August 2008, We decided that we want to build. Checked few homes at a display village (Kellyville?) and understood that having no land did it more difficult to select a house as well as regulations are very different with different councils so builder won't be too keen in talking to you unless they see that you're ready. So after seeing a few homes we sort of drafted a few ideas about what sort of land we would need and went land hunting. We saw and learned about strict "no cutting trees" and "fire safety" rules at Ku Ring Gai, saw generous blocks at Kellyville and surroundings, however, remembering traffic jams throughout Castle Hills as well as seeing emptiness and lack of development in the area we backed off. Then someone at the Display Village advised we go to the Nelson's Ridge and there we go. The salesman there was quite pushy and blocks were not that big.. Then we went to the neighbouring Lakewood. James Roger, and amazing salesman and this, combined with the overall quality and beauty of both estates (seeing kids playing together without being supervised by adults did very impress us) determined our purchase of a corner block -- cr Samuel Way and Butler Rd, "the Display Homes street". Moreover, the market looked quite depressed, the interest rates were above 9% so we could negotiate a small discount that was however enough to escape the stamp duty on the land. Another goodie was that the settlement was scheduled at the end of November (by that time the rates went down to 6.25% as well as Rudd introduced a FHBG bribe of 24K)...
September-November 2008, aftre seeing many-many builders we discovered Clarendon in a display village next to Wollongong. Their Savannah looked very and very good. Their onsite sales were also friendly and very professional. After deciding between so many of their homes (Savannah, Manhattan and Promenade) we went with the last one -- a big and a lovely house. Besides Clarendon we were considering Lily Homes and Masterton, however, Lily were a bit more expensive to build (after we found all hidden costs) and Masterton sales were a bit disconnected and disorganised, so we steer away. As an option we had talks to Provincial but having Lakewood built by 50% with their homes we were not too keen on having something similar to the rest of the houses there. I should admit that Clarendon have a huge amount of hidden costs. The following was not included in the base price or absent from the package:
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[*]site costs
[*]BASIX allowance and water tank
[*]air con (14K, plus $1600 for a "smart" zone design and sound isolation)
[*]no driveway
[*]no landscaping (plans and implementation)
[*]no flooring
[*]pathetic default tiling (to have a proper tiling up to the ceiling it costed us about 6K)
[*]mediocre default selection of bricks (added 5K for Boral Coco Aspire)
[*]2.45 ceiling hight and to upgrade the ground floor to 2.75 it set us back by ~8K
[*]no alfresco (additional 7K for base and roof extension)
[*]no flooring and to put timber across the whole house (excluding white rooms and the garage) it is looking around 24K[/list]
We also signed to their birthday offer for 4K that helped us to get better kitchen and bathroom stuff and offseted some other improvements like better doors, windows etc..
The total price to construct the beast (without landscape, fencing, retaining walls, driveway and floor) after a 3K price increase due to slowness (I will get it later) is looking at ~370K (we also made few modifications and extensions to the house -- costed about 18K). A kinda more that we hoped for however, let the dream become a reality...
November 2008 - Feb 2009, multiple amendments to the plans. Most of those due to the tender presenter being unable to read our requirements (e.g. we ask to add a sliding door between the Master Bedroom and the Bed 5 and she puts a sliding door as the entry door to the Bed 5 and so on).. Plus, being a complete newb in the construction process I did not realise a difference between awning and sliding windows or that all windows to the streets (a corner block) had to be horizontally aligned and so on I was complaining about all this before here and the support from the community was tremendous. Should say that Tara, a design manager from Stockland and other their guys were very and very helpful with finalising everything and making sure all requirements were met.
Some time along the lines I engaged with Eco Design to produce landscaping plans. Simon there is an amazing fellow as well as the rest of the team, would strongly recommend this company to anyone.
Also, after the Clarendon did a site survey they found that Eden Brae, who built a display home next to ours encroached to our land with their retaining wall that would prevent Clarendon from building the house in the way we wanted to have it (a 600 mm extension of the Garage in order to make a clothes/shoes compartment in the foyer). When I talked to the solicitor, the bloody thing told me that I should have known better and he cannot help me.. Unless I wanted to pay 10000 for a High Court case... Or paying him $750 for writing a letter. I did not tell him were to go and what to do to himself despite a strong desire and spent several days reading and learning a number of Legal Acts. This resulted me writing a letter to the director of Eden Brae and, a miracle, they accepted the fault and moved the wall by half a metre! Felt good! Should say that Eden Brae's team were very professional, caring and helpful in this incident. Well done Eammon!
Stockland advise me to use a brokerage company -- not bad guys and offered a free conveyancing. However, the conveyancing was not completely free I had to pay something for something -- around $600. Plus looking after many clients they were not able to provide timely response that I was hoping to get, so a few months of delay can be contributed there. Plus mistakes with FHBG form and a few more issues. One more time I saw a proof that noone can do anything for me better than I can. Next time I'll be talking direct to the bank
March 2009 we were at the Council. I also had a chat with one of their City Planners (however was not much helpful) in order to have a pre-DA review (as the Holroyd Council advises). Some time in May the Council responded with a letter listing missing things -- the most significant was that the bloody tender presenter, despite clear requirements for frontal setbacks did a half a metre mistake.. So plans had to be re-drafted including landscape -- and additional expense of $800. Also, the Council wanted us to make the 1.8 m fence shorter, taking it further back from the from back. A big thanks to Stockland for putting a support letter and we were able to negotiate the fence staying were it was -- a bit more privacy to the dining room.
Also, by that time we forgot about the tender presenter and were in reliable hands of our Customer Service Officer Cathie -- such a nice person. All was under control and Clarendon implemented fixes quite quickly and another application was sent to the Council before we went on leave for 6 week early July.
July 2009 - September 2009, DA has been granted - with a few conditions like having a 3000 litre water tank instead of the initial 2000 one, a pergola to dress the secondary street more and few other minor things that costed additional 5K. Back to the bank for the final evaluation. 4 week wasted. Finally the ACC has been issued. Paid the first payment (on top of the initial 4K when signing the tender) and the CSO said that it should take a max of 20 working days before something will happen on site.
I also had to sign a declaration that the site was clear of debris and when I went to make some photos I found that some slob living next door had unloaded about 2 cubic metres of soil on my land. So, quickly rushed to a Bunnings, got a shovel and spent several hours exercising.
Today I visited the site (20 days after) and guess what -- the piering has been done! So pleased. So, looking forward for further progress.
Some photos are attached. Please do not hesitate to ask any question. Will be updating this topic with the progress.
Plans (bit outdated, pre-first DA, but give a good idea):
The site posting pictures adds banners that could be considered as slightly inappropriate -- my apologies for that and please take caution when opening at the workplace, if I find another good picture hosting, will re-upload there
Plans:
Work as of 21/10/2009:
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