Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jul 14, 2011 8:37 am Hello all, Over the past couple of months, we have been searching for a house design for our block of land. We found a design from a major builder, and was enticed to put $1500 down for them to prepare a tender due to a special they had that weekend (yes, I am a sucker!). I made a number of specific requests (custom designed A/C, and udgrade to rainwater harvesting), and expected them to be included in the tender. They gave me a site costs budget of around $30k. Now, we received our preliminary tender a couple of weeks ago, and had the meeting with them to go over it. To my suprise and dismay they had not priced what I asked, and just lumped in provisional sums, or excluded the items I requested. On top of that, they included their standard site costs of $17 800, which included Class M slab, 1 metre of piers, but excluded things like fencing, and stormwater drainage, which they lumped in another $5k provisional sum, Class H slab another $6.5k. My site is pretty flat, with a fall of 1 metre from rear to the front, but there will be fill on the site. Soil tests are not done yet, as the land is not registered. With all the exclusions, the site costs will end up well over $30 k. I requested a break down of the standard site costs, and got the reply - "we don't normally do that", and that if there are savings in those site costs, they would be pocketing the savings, and will not pass them back. Talk about having their cake and eating it too. The guy who presented the tender even asked me if I had considered owner building, as I seemed to know what I was talking about! This guy was not a natural sales person at all. The original sales guy has taken over our tender, after I explained how dis-interested the tender presenter was in helping us. I would appreciate your thoughts on: 1) Whether these site cost provisions seem reasonable. 2) Whether I have grounds for a refund if they did not present me with the tender information I requested. Hopefully we can sort this out with them, as we are talking about a $420k + contract, and I only have an issue with 2-3% of the contract value. I am not sure whether Perth has its own way of doing things in regards to this. Most of Perth has class A (sandy soil), except for some areas near rivers or hills. 2 13106 Is anyone building with Mojo and have a recent site cost tender 0 15954 Henley should give you some indication of site costs. Too many variable to give you any reasonable accuracy 1 1893 |