Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jun 17, 2010 10:16 pm Hi All We are signed up to build with Great Living Homes, a local builder in Mandurah WA. We have been dealing with them for about 9 months and are currently awaiting the laying of out slab. I have checked them out on product review and there is a real mixed bag of comments. I would appreciate any feedback or hints and tips on dealing with them if possible. Any feedback good/bad would be appreciated. Thanks Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 2Jun 18, 2010 1:02 am Hi We nearly went with them. Found them good to deal with but we were building NOR and felt that they were more suited to Mandurah area. They were adding $ks for their tradies to drive from Mandurah to NOR which we were not prepared to pay for. In the end we went with a company that was building three houses in the same street as our block - just felt a bit safer. This was in the middle of the GFC aswell so going with a more financially stable business was in the back of our minds aswell. They do have some great designs though and their elevations are very nice. Good luck with everything Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 3Jun 25, 2010 6:50 pm Hi We have signed up to build a home with GLH about 6 months ago. We are just finalising our finance, all council plans, building licence are complete. The whole process was pretty quick and streamlined. Only delay was waiting for the shire approval for plans. Overall they had done a pretty good job to date, only a few communications issues which caused alittle stress over the master wall. We didnt realise or were told that the masterwall actually reduced the internal size of your home, so we had 2 differing measurements for the plans which caused us some grief. Which home design are you building? We are also building in perth, south of the river. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 4Jun 28, 2010 6:51 pm We are building with GLH's and are still waiting for a slab down date. What do you mean the house ends up being smaller because of Masterwall?
Do you mean smaller than whats on the final plans? We have Masterwall but havent been told anything about the rooms being smaller. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 5Jun 28, 2010 8:15 pm Hi. From the outset we have been told it takes around 10 months from when all paper work is done including finance. Im under no illusion it will take less then this. Most 2 storey homes are a 12 month construction peroid. So im well prepared to allow for 12 months which seems reasonable to me. Although our contract does say 255 days. When we signed up we did not have masterwall on our plans it was an addition at pre-start. When we got our plans after pre-start with variations including the upstairs was slightly smaller then our orginal plans. This is becuase we added masterwall after those orginal plans. Masterwall increases the depth of your wall by around 7.5cm so you are making the wall thicker. If you increase the upstairs walls thickness then you have 2 options, decrease room size upstairs to allow for this or you need to increase the downstairs sizes so the walls meet up. You cant have upstairs walls being 7.5cm larger then downstairs. Thats what I ment, its an issue we came across. Do you use email to communicate with GLH. I mainly use emails and have found them to be fast and efficent. I also have a record of all communication doing it this way. I find being alittle proactive with communication and informing the builders of everything we do like pre-approval for finance, bank details and such. I simply email them everything. I recieve promt copies of all sign documents in the mail. I really dont have any issues so far other then the masterwall, which was a miss communication, we should have been told about it at pre-start, but all worked out. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 6Nov 18, 2010 11:49 am Does anyone out there have a real building time frame with GLH? We have been going 4 months fom earthworks and we are only at upper storey wall frame stage. We are being told that the roof will be on by xmas and handover in April but given the time it has taken so far I dont think its possible. There is 27 work days left to xmas and the whole house to be finished by April?? Is this in line with anyone elses experience.
Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 7Nov 30, 2010 1:16 am Hi We are building with APG and it took three months to get upstairs and a further six months later we are expecting the keys this week. So, all up nine and a half months from start to finish. I have never seen a double storey go up in six months (unless it is the display home ). You are probably about right - and if you have April in your contract then all the better. Our contract days were crazy, and allowed for far too much time to build the house. Cheers Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 8Dec 02, 2010 6:10 pm Hi Mardo, I've been reading your post and felt I had to reply. My partner and I are also building our 1st home with Great Living Homes and let me just say, I feel your frustrations. We thought that a simple 2-storey (the Sovereign) framed upper house couldn't possibly take so long especially since we were enticed by their advertising of 10 months construction time. -We signed up in July '09 -Pre-start in Sept '09 and -All approvals done by Dec '09. -Land cleared on Thurs 28 Jan 2010 -Footings down on Mon 8 Feb and -Slab down on 10 Feb. -Bricking began 30 Mar and completed 2 weeks later. -Upper framing wall and floor took until the 2 July (about 3 months) and -Roof cover 9 Aug. -We recently reached lock up on 17 Nov. Since then, we've had some internals done of kitchen cabinets, trough, vanities in and tiling started. So to reach lock up took nearly 10 months. We had many periods for weeks on end whereby nothing was done. We're building NOR and there were issues with tradies being disgruntled about having to travel from SOR. It has been an emotional roller coaster for us especially as our building contract puts us at handover just before Xmas and as much as we've been told by our supervisor that it'll happen, we're not getting our hopes up...... PM if you'd like to discuss further. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 9Feb 04, 2011 5:37 pm Our house is taking longer then planned but mainly due to finance (banks are terrible) and changes to the design we made. We added another bedroom, ensuit and a 3rd garage so some major changes, but at a good price. We are expecting site works to begin any day now so hopefully not long. Our build time is about 11 months due to additions we made. So we are under no illussion it will be ready by christmas but would be nice if it was. To be perfectly honest I am happy if the building is a bit slower and we get a quality home that is well made and finished well. I hear so many horror stories from friends with other major builders that there quality is junk, hence why I went for a smaller company. I will update this as we build and let people know how we go and any issues we come across. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 10Feb 04, 2011 7:52 pm I'd hate to put a dampener on your optimism but we started started late January 2010 and we're still waiting for handover. Despite many promises to be in by Christmas it never eventuated. Initially we were told 10 months and our contract allowed 11 months, it has now exceeded that. We didn't make any structural changes except removing an ensuite wall. Our place is the standard Sovereign series 2 so nothing fancy. As for quality, I'd love to say we've seen evidence of that but we haven't. There have been countless issues that we've had to raise with our supervisor over half-a**ed work and the time factor is the most fustrating..... workers (if you can call them that) who've showed up late, put in an hour of physical labour then left. Work that should take X amount of time took at least 3 times that of industry accepted. So having initially expected to be in our house by November 2010, we are still awaiting those elusive keys. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 11Feb 08, 2011 5:21 pm Mike8472 you had done pre-start in June last year and you still havent got earthworks? What's been going on. We must have done pre-start at about the same time (April 2010) and our upper storey just got rendered. We have had similar experiences to S&D however I cant fault the quality of our house. It has been slow going to start with. Nearly 6.5 months and still quite a bit to go. There is not a single fault that I can spot to date regarding the tradies work. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 12Feb 13, 2011 7:19 am Hi. We had alot of issues with our bank. They took from June to late August to give us an answer on finance (3 months) was the worst customer service from a bank if such a thing exists I have ever seen. Which bank, St George, there useless. We thought everything was good and the bank said we would get the finance then at the last possible minute they just said no, and refused to give us a reason. Needless to say this put a big delay in our project, as we had to source funding from a new bank starting all over again in September. Our new bank Macquarie had our loan done pretty quick and things have moved on from there. We made our 1st payment in January as settlement for the loan was mid december and no point paying money then as everything shuts down for a month. So the delays was nothing to do with the builder was all financial and very bad customer service from our bank. What made it worse is I have an investment loan with St George as well for my rental property, with perfect repayments and good rental income for its price. Needless to say I am currently refinancing this loan to another bank such was my disgust at there service, they no longer will have the privledge of money. With our 1st payment made to the builders in mid to late January, site works have begun in a reasonable time frame after payment. Checked the block today and looks like material is being droped of for the slab and such to go down in comming days or weeks. As for the building time frame, I am not bothered if it is not completed by the end of the year. For me a build finish of time of around Feb/March 2012 would be perfect. Thats when my next lot of annual leave is booked for, so will give me plenty of time to get the new home in order. That is 12-13 months away so hopefully enough time for keys to be handed to us. From most people I have talked to Great Living Homes do a good job on quality but they are a month or 2 slower then some other builders. So far I cant really fault them, only very minor issues to date. Good communication, I mostly use email and only call if its an urgent matter. Have always got copies of all signed documents, plans, updated plans, heaps of variations and so forth. They have been pretty quick to respond to my requests normally. Do you have any pictures of your home under construction that you are happy to share? Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 13Feb 15, 2011 6:08 pm I checked the block today and the slab is going down as we speak. All the pipes and trenches are done, they are pouring concrete when I was there into some of the trenches. Everything seems to be going pretty well. Going back to check it shortly. So everything seems to be moving quickly at present, and on time. Great Living Homes did tell me it would be about mid February when the slab would go there and they were spot on. So for now it seems like things are on track. I might start up my own thread and posts plans and pictures, if the Mrs agrees. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 16Jun 03, 2011 6:25 pm GLH are a slower builder. But from my experience the quality is better then alot of other houses I see going up in our area. Just our brick work alone is alot better, very neat compared to other big builders. We are lucky and have 3-4 houses near us going up the same time, so I had a peak at them and there brick work was shocking. In comparision ours is very well done, mostly. We had slab down in mid Feb, storm water and soakwells done in early march. Brickwork started end of march and took about 3 weeks, we are building a 5x3x3 so alot of bricks. We had some delays with steel being made for the 1st floor. Although our house is one of the 1st to use the Steel upgrade for the truss flooring instead of timber (upgraded from timber to steel at no cost to us so happy about that). The flooring would have been done this week but rain has stopped most work, hopefully done next week and walls can go up. So far its been about 3 and half months to get to the floor being done, so I guess about 4 months for upper walls to be completed. Seems about average to me. I would like to be in by the end of the year but think it will be Feb next year. Although things do seem to be moving quickly now. I think GLH say 10 month build time but that dosnt include christmas break, public holidays and so on. Then if your delayed by weather, not much you can do. So factor all of that into any build. I would much rather take a few months longer then get the rubbish builds I see around us from big building companies that are household names. Fingers crossed we get a quality finish. Re: Anyone out there built with Great Living Homes ?? 19Jun 22, 2011 3:44 pm mike8472 Although our house is one of the 1st to use the Steel upgrade for the truss flooring instead of timber (upgraded from timber to steel at no cost to us so happy about that). Our truss flooring was also steel instead of the timber and we had that installed early 2010 after signing a variation certificate in January 2010. Also, at no extra cost to us. We were told in was a quicker and stronger construction method but it took 2 months to install ours and that was after delivery. The framed upper took another month and a half. The steel truss has been their preferred construction since then. I haven't been too impressed with our floors though. It is very creaky in certain spots, almost like the sound of loose floor boards. I have to tip toe out of the main bedroom and step over the "invisible line" as to not disturb my partner sleeping. It's the same deal in another bedroom. It's driving me nuts for the last 5 months and getting maintenance issues looked at is like pulling hen's teeth. We recently had our 4 month maintenance period and the list sent through to GLH was extensive to say the least - 3 pages. Quality? We must have got the short straw. I haven’t. But have a Lowe Design home. Not only did I find Matt Lowe patronising and a bully, but the home is NOT TO CODE. I have water coming through the bricks… 1 14351 Hi we are looking to talk to people who have built with them recently. We have signed mid range built contract but identified that a lot of things are not included.… 0 707 I would be wary. Is you site demilished but nothing else done? Sounds like liquidity problems to me. Our builder did the same. Got hundreds of thousands of dollars of… 2 15392 |