Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 25, 2011 11:57 am Hi All, First post here on this forum. New to building (but not renovating!) so needing a lot of advise!!! This will be our third home but first new home. Hubby & I have deposited on a block of land at Gregory Hills and where set to build with Widsom Homes (Providence 26 MKII). We had our ""tender"" presentation last week which was a bit of a joke. The survey hadn't been done as they couldn't gain access to the land (fair enough) but everything we asked as extras hadn't even been included in the tender so instead of the suggested 2 hr presentation we where there for maybe 30 mins?? The consultant apologised and said they would redo the tender and have it ready for Thursday - well Thursday came and went and nothing... :/ We love the house and the sales service we got from the sales rep at Oran Park was great (the one at Gregory Hills was useless :/) so couldnt' fault them there. But since it's gone to head office things have just gone pear shapped and we haven't even gotten past the price yet!!! We are thinking of pulling the pin and doing our $700 in as their customer service sucks and going with EB and possibly build the Saville 27 or the Manchester 23 based on the fact that EB are really pushing the ""Fixed priced tender"" (""no more to pay, if something happens they wear it"" policy they seem to have. This was attractive to us a we don't want any unexpected site costs coming in as these could send us over budget. But on googling EB & reading on the forum a lot of people have had issues with the so called fixed priced tenders not being fixed price. Is this correct?? If so what are they trying to sting you for??? We walked past a Masterton home yesterday and never even considered building with a ""big guy"" but we fell in love with the Overture 26.7. It's everything we need and are waiting for their free quote with a few modifications. The issue we have at the moment is we have pretty much over Wisdom but will wait for their tender to come back to see what it comes in at. We are thinking of putting down the $750 deposit to secure the $6000 promo that EB have at the moment and also avoid the price increase that happens as of tomorrow. Also as a long weekend special they had an additional $2000 promo. Way we see it is if we don't we are loosing out on the $3000 price increase that will happen tomorrow and then the $2000 (so $5000 all up) as opposed to loosing $750 if we decide not to go with them.... but the research from last night about the not so fixed price tender has us worried.... :/ Thoughts? Suggestions? Experiences? We have sold our home and it settled last week and we are now renting and obviously would like to get this process happening as fast as we can (land due to register July/August) and would to be in this time next yr which is what the time frame with Wisdom was to be. We have two small children and I am finding this whole process extermely stressful I barely sleep at night!!!!!!!!!! I have to say renovating was Much easier!! TIA, Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 2Apr 25, 2011 1:27 pm Sounds like Wisdom haven't got any better at the tender process. We had so many omissions and items charged for twice....it took more than a few times to get an accurate tender Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 3Apr 25, 2011 1:32 pm Mely - have you finished your build? If so are you happy with it? Any problems other than the careless factor of the head office that you encountered? Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 4Apr 25, 2011 2:11 pm We are....and no. All I can say is don't expect the same attention to detail you see in their display homes. In their defence I think a majority of volume builders are the same. We paid for many upgrades only to have problems with the basics.....for eg. brickwork and gyprocking. We are very disappointed with some aspects of our home. Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 5Apr 25, 2011 2:40 pm Our build is finished and we are almost at our 3 month maintenance inspection. We have a number of things which need to be sorted, a few things that still haven't been completed from the build itself. The tender was accurate, included all the modifications we wanted. The contract was fixed price and they sent us contract variations with a price attached a couple of time but we responded back that it was a fixed price contract and we didn't need to pay and they honoured that. I'm unhappy with a couple of things. Namely the gyrock setting in the ceilings. I will be asking them to rectify it. It doesn't look too bad during the day when the handover inspection took place and the inspection by the independent inspector. It looks disgustingly horrifying at night though. I did expect there to be problems regardless of which builder we went with. There is not a single builder in existence that everyone is 100% happy with. I read reviews and knew communication and site supervisor changes seemed to be the most common issues. So I felt like we knew what we were getting. We did have exactly those issues as well so no surprises there and I wasn't completely frustrated and angered by that because I expected it. If you are unhappy at this point within the tender process Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 6Apr 25, 2011 2:48 pm Fernyhouse - which company did you build with?? I just feel like they had 4 weeks to do our tender and we got there and all our upgrades asked for where not even listed :/ seriously it's not hard they where off their price list... We also think it's going to come in way over budget on site costs now as everything is gestimating that we where swaying more to the EB approach of ""fixed contract pricing"" which they are so big on (only to read the reviews that ppl said this is not the case :/) but as you said if it says no more to pay then that's what they should honour and that's great that they did do that for you. I totally understand this isn't going to be a smooth 100% happy with process but I would have thought something as simple as copying the list of upgrades which they have already priced and putting it together with the other prices shouldn't be rocket science!!!!!!!!! Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 7Apr 25, 2011 3:37 pm Hi freshstart, I can highly recommend Cavalier homes Macarthur who have display homes in Gregory Hills. We nearly went with Wisdom but after comparing their tender with Cavaliers & the price W charged for upgrades we decided to go with Cavalier. You are dealing direct with the builder/owners so the admin side is much better than with the bigger builders. It is owned by two brothers, one does the sales/admin side & the other is the site supervisor. we had a trouble free build & they were great to deal with. Good luck with your search. Loretta Built The Jenmark with Cavalier Homes Macarthur. http://camdenacres.blogspot.com/ Thread - viewtopic.php?f=31&t=17870 We are in - front landscaping begins Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 8Apr 26, 2011 12:25 pm We are currently building with Wisdom and have had a problem free process so far. We did have a problem with them getting the variations right at the end of the admin process. On the second attempt, I firmly said to them that the variation form I had in my hand is what I will be paying. If they are not all on here and if they came back with a another one I will not be paying, but the variations will be included in the house This seemed to work as everything was on the list. I can say this is the only problem we have had with Wisdom, everything else has been 100% and service has been great! P.S. We may however have a SS who doesn't like communicating but we will see how that goes as I haven't built before and maybe it is normal and I am reading into it to much. "I would never expect anyone to do something that I would not do myself" http://www.squeakbuilds.blogspot.com Custom Designer home. - Builder to be determined Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 9May 09, 2011 1:32 pm We have basically given up on Wisdom and demanded a refund of the tender deposit as they did nothing, no survey's etc & the tender didn't even have prices for the variations in it and we waited about 3 weeks for it.... We are either going with EB or MH now and have had pretty good customer service from both. Re: Issues with Builders (Widsom, Eden Brae or Masterton) 10May 18, 2011 12:22 pm Just want to share our experience with Masterton tender/draft plan process. We went to Masteron beginning of Jan 11, it didn't take them long to present the 1st tender to us. However, things have gone really slow after we paid $3000 end of Jan 11 for them to draft Plan. We had the first Plan review meeting in March. Now is waiting for the final plan to be draft! SC keep saying it will be ready soon, but we are still waiting! That has already gone over the tender period. Its very frustrating as we can't do anything now except waiting. I built with EB back on 2009. Check out this thread on this forum. viewtopic.php?f=31&t=12911&p=154061#p154061 I can't speak for recent expericience however, we had no… 1 23629 4 16976 I am looking at building a house. Has anyone used Construkt Homes (based in Adelaide)? Does anyone have experience with this builder? 0 6491 |