Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 23Sep 04, 2010 12:17 am We have just decided to build the Barwon from Fairhaven too, signed the quote last weekend. Chatz Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 24Nov 08, 2010 11:06 am We are building the Glenaire with Fairhaven and we are (fingers crossed) getting our block cut this week. Curious to see how long until the slab goes down after that. Really hoping it won't be too long. It's interesting to hear everyone's experience with customer service. I think overall it is good but our experience to date has been up and down. Initially it was great and Rod in sales is awesome but when we moved on from that stage and signed contracts etc, we really don't get contacted too much on the progress of what is actually happening. It seems if we don't call or email, we won't hear anything! A weekly update would be great, even if there is not much to say. It would really give us a piece of mind to know they are on the case. Instead we are left wondering the majority of the time. Saying that though, really hoping things will kick along fairly rapidly once we have the cut and slab down in the next couple of weeks. Will post more as stuff happens. Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 25Jan 06, 2011 10:40 am It's been a while since anyones updated this post so i just thought i'd keep it alive. Our lands had further delays until March now and it's going to be cutting it fine for our deadline of the 15th November 2011. Hopefully the land is ready in March and the house can get underway very quickly! If anyones had some futher updates it would be great to hear how the building process is going. Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 26Jan 16, 2011 1:35 pm Drover, thank you so much for this thread. It has been very useful and comforting for us as we decide who we will build with. My wife and I have built a few homes, first with Henley, then Hermitage, then Metricon, then Porter Davis. Sadly we made the mistake of going with a bulk builder four times. All experiences were terrible. Henley was by far the worst thing ever experienced. Anyway.... We fell in love with Fairhaven homes a few years ago, but at that time we were building in Point Cook so didn't pursue anything with Fairhaven as we knew they didn't build on our side of Melbourne. We're moving to Drouin now and we are so excited about the fact Fairhaven build out there!! We haven't done much more than see their display homes but the build quality and reputation is enough for us to be confident with building one of their homes. In most instances building a house is at least a 12 month process, nobody should realistically expect an entirely smooth process without issues. Emails will be missed and calls not returned, but these things are minor and should be expected. It's how the site manager responds to issues that sets the good apart from the bad!! Anyway, I'm off to email Fairhaven and hope a combination of the Glenaire variants will be possible. I'll enjoy following this thread and forum and will update as we go!! Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 27Jan 18, 2011 10:53 am Hi Drover, Sorry to hear of delays with your land, hopefully you wont have to wait much longer. fogdog and crostriker, congrats on deciding to build the Glenaire, it's a beautiful home Ok, we've been in our home almost 5 months now, love this house We had the maintenance guy here this morning for our 3 month inspection, all went well,! Really happy that they are agreeing to fix everything on our list (we were told ours is a very long list) although we have nothing major on there, just a lot of minor things. So we'll see how it goes, getting it all done. Mind you already had someone out this morning to fix the gutter, so very happy Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 28Jan 20, 2011 7:51 am They have fabulouse floor plans, the glenair is lovely. we have been in our whistler a month now and love our house but it has been a very hard and stressful time getting here and we are now waiting for thier trades to return after the break to finish off our handover items. We will keep you posted how we go. Building at Sierra Estate. Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 29Jan 20, 2011 8:02 am kavother They have fabulouse floor plans, the glenair is lovely. we have been in our whistler a month now and love our house but it has been a very hard and stressful time getting here and we are now waiting for thier trades to return after the break to finish off our handover items. We will keep you posted how we go. Congratulations on getting your keys kavother enjoy your new home Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 30Mar 24, 2011 11:26 am well its been over 3 months in and we are still waiting on a few handover items to be finished and reimbursement as we had to pay for our own site clean. The painter returned and now we await a paint representative as they repainted majority of our skirting boards and sills and some doors and they are the wrong colour! our whole build process has become quite a comedy of errors, im so over it and the unreturned and unacknowledged emails really gets my blood boiling. Whilst we love our home we are extremely dissapointed in the lack of quality control and level of finishes in many areas. Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 31Jun 28, 2011 9:44 am brb_654 We had the maintenance guy here this morning for our 3 month inspection, all went well,! Really happy that they are agreeing to fix everything on our list (we were told ours is a very long list) although we have nothing major on there, just a lot of minor things. So we'll see how it goes, getting it all done. What a joke, I posted this on January 18th, it's now June 28th and I'm still waiting..... Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 32Jun 28, 2011 11:16 am Wow, that is really worrying. Have you consistently been on their cases about someone coming to get your issues fixed? We are looking to have handover in the next few weeks so I will be really curious to see what the maintenance process will be for us. Keep us posted on your progress. I hope that they get in gear really soon and get it all fixed for you. Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 33Sep 24, 2011 3:16 pm So it's been a fair while since i've posted any updates and lots has happened. We finally got ownership of the land back in June and after finalising plans signed the building contract and started building on the 19th August. Once we received the land it took longer than we expected to start building. This is partly due to a few third party companies being involved in the final stages of the plans and partly due to us constantly changing our minds and adding/removing things. We both picked up a few inconsistencies on the plans when we signed the contracts in early July and also made a few more changes. Any changes we made after signing contracts is done via email and a lot of trust is put into the builder that the most current plans and changes are used. Some of the changes we made had been temporarily misplaced and some changes had to be repeated a few times but we got there before we started building. We went down and had a look today and the frame has been completed, tiles are completed and bricks are 50% done. We're very happy with the speed of construction so far as it's only been 1 month since the site scrape and it's almost at lock up. I know from watching a new house going up next to where we are now that after lock up is reached things really seem to slow down. It'll be interesting to see how it goes for us with the addition of Christmas holidays as well. One of our main concerns which i'm sure everyone can relate to is how the colour selection will look in real life. We found on another builders website that they had software you could use at no cost that would let you visualise your colour selection in each room as well as the fascade. We thought this was great and we were a little dissapointed that Fairhaven Homes didnt have it as well. We tried picking a similar house and matching the colours but it just wasn't quite the same. I'm happy to say though that so far the bricks, guttering and tiles match really well and we've got no regrets. I've mentioned this before but i'm happy to say it again that the colour consultant we met with twice was very helpful and has helped us make some good decisions so far. Lets hope the inside works just as well! As far as communication over the last few weeks from the builder, we've had very little to complain about. We've had regular contact from our Fairhaven rep with updates on whats happening and the invoicing has been troublefree so far as well. My emails are quickly responded to and on the couple of occasions that i've called has always answered the phone. It's hard to comment on the quality of the work so far because we have nothing to compare it against but it all seems fine. We'll know more about this when we start seeing the progress during the fixtures stage. I hope everyone else that have chosen to build with Fairhaven are going well so far as well. If anyone has any updates let us know! Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 34Oct 22, 2011 2:38 pm We went down and had a look through our house on Friday and were happy to see the progress. It's 2 months in now and the plasterboards are up and almost finished. The cornicing will be done next week with painting to follow. Starting to look like a real home now! Re: Fairhaven Homes Review - Ongoing 36Aug 05, 2014 4:55 pm So it's been almost 3 years and overdue for me to finalise my house building experience with Fairhaven Homes. There are a few things I remember from the end of the construction time which are worth noting. During one of the final inspections we realised that the cable conduits (for mounting TV’s on the wall) that were in the plans had been forgotten. The electrician came back and drilled holes through the studs which ended up working fine but if I ever build again I’ll pay more attention to the finer details. Sometime near the end of construction we worked out a handover date which I mistakenly assumed was fairly solid. Unfortunately this date came and went and I’d organised a range of contractors (Aircon, driveway, TV antennae etc.) who I changed once and didn’t have the heart to do a second time. We agreed to move in even though handover wasn’t complete which I hoped wasn’t going to be a mistake. Advice to everyone else would be not to organise moving in and contractors until you have the keys in hand. The only item that dragged on for ages after moving in was an island bench which they had issues getting the contractor to make up for them. In the end we gave up and received a credit but we regret this now as the bench space is too small. We would have increased the bench length if we knew we weren’t going to get the island bench. On handover, the section about damaged road guttering was conveniently skipped over which there was some of and is still damaged to this day. The contractor who came to install our bamboo floors was fairly unhappy about the unevenness of our concrete slab. He spent quite a few hours grinding the floor so the boards would sit evenly. On the 3 month inspection we had a list longer than the page allowed of around 32 issues of generally minor consequence. Things like roof gutter loose, cupboard draw not closing properly, room doors too low and rubbing on carpet etc. After a couple visits these were all corrected without any delays so fairly happy with this aspect of the process. Thumbs up to the maintenance division at Fairhaven. The roof in the main living area clearly shows the plaster joins at night and at times during the day but we were told it’s within the building code so I assume fairly normal practice. Paint job is fairly average at spots around the house. Drip lines in the home theatre and only single coats in some less obvious places. As far as how the house is going now 3 year down the track, generally really well. We had a window crack but this was around when there was an earthquake in Moe so possibly due to that. Small gaps have appeared between the cornice and the plaster in our ensuite. That’s really it. Advice for anyone else about to build a house, hire an independent inspector at your own cost. One of my neighbours had the builder knock down a whole wall because it wasn’t straight. I wonder how often this is ignored… Also pay close attention during inspections to make sure everything is as per your expectations. The house should be built to the standard of the display home so don’t let them befuddle you with talk of building codes and standards. Don’t organise anything until handover is complete! I would recommend Fairhaven Homes to anyone looking to build as we love the layout of our house and the staff were all friendly and courteous. With no major issues to date we are happy and would build again. I've had plenty of good (and some bad) experiences with different contractors so if you're looking for a contractor for anything around the house feel free to message me and I'll let you know. We are looking to do a KDR with fairhaven homes, Have seen plenty of good reviews about them pre construction and plenty of negative reviews about them during contruction… 0 18039 i thought the flipped plan initially but bec i want narrow pathway from entry to dining (dont like bend), also cannot fit the… 7 17278 It is true that a builder can ignore your independent inspection report as it is not part of the contractual arrangement but that is stupid because he cannot avoid fixing… 9 46854 |