Porter Davis homes

Congratulations - beautiful house and fantastic estate!

My advice is the same for any builder:

1. They tend to make a lot of mistakes in plans, tenders etc, so check everything carefully.
2. Get everything in writing, keep paper copies of it all and file them in a way that makes it easy to find something quickly. It's amazing how many times you have to draw their attention to their own words to get something sorted out.
3. Don't accept second-best. If something isn't right, keep at them until it is.
4. Develop a lot of patience.
5. Think really seriously about hiring an independent inspector, at least for frame, lockup and practical completion stages. It'll be money well spent.

Good luck - it's going to be stressful and undoubtedly infuriating at times, but speaking from experience, it'll all be worth it once you're living in your beautiful new home.

Hi maryanne.kara, I'm also building at University Hill with Porter Davis, they started building about 3 weeks ago. It's my second time building but first time with a volume builder, the best advice that I can give you is not to take no for an answer. They tend to say no to everything to save themselves hassle but if you really want something and it's a reasonable request there's no reason they can't make a change here and there, just be prepared to fight for it.

Hi, Thanks for the advice - which house are you building - did you have problems with the number of customer service agents that they have.. I am getting frustrated with the amount of times they avoid contacting us - today we were told that our neighbours have refused to give us permission for the retaining wall - should that have not been dealt with prior to giving us a fixed cost contract...

a little confused...

good luck and let me know how you go!!

Hi kek
we love the estate and we are hanging out to get into the house patience is something i donthave thats why they are dealing with my husband, he is calmer than I am ...

You're ahead of us then....neither of us have any patience. We somehow survived....

The staff turnover and lack of responsiveness is infuriating, but you just have to be prepared to persist when you don't get a reply. They're a bit overloaded. If you don't get a reply to a phone call, send an email.... then keep following up till you get a response.

We're building the Camberwell, we've had two customer service reps since we started the process in September last year, the first one never returned phone calls or e-mails, she literally spoke to us twice over four months, but the second one has been good so far. Good luck with your house too!

Ok my patience is gone..
from Monday where we didnt have any problems today wednesday there are issues.
1. Our neighbour wont sign off us having a retaining wall and I dont blame him - bow suddenly we have to have an independant engineer oking it - ummm hello they should have completed this ages ago
2. suddenly they cant find the pegs for the block = i found 2 on opposite ends of the block on Good Froday and they were there... so now PD want to charge $880.00 - found a local that would do it for $550.00 and he was the first guy i called...

i know that this is only minor but my fear is what else will there be in the future

[quote="maryanne.kara"]
2. suddenly they cant find the pegs for the block = i found 2 on opposite ends of the block on Good Froday and they were there... so now PD want to charge $880.00 - found a local that would do it for $550.00 and he was the first guy i called...

Hi

Can i have the surveyor phone number? i should get my pegs done before PD start work

mervyn

Our CSC called before our site start claiming the SS could not find the pegs and suggested I go and have a "mummys look", sure enough they were all there just covered in dirt.

mdzzj

My neighbors done fence all round. Can PD use it as a reference for setting. i dont think can find any pegs

They will not allow the fence to be used, I did find our rear ones just behind the fence on the neightbours side.

Their number is Tel 03 8823 2300 -
i told them that they just had to take a better look and there was no movement with the customer "service" consultant.
and now they want the pegging completed by wednesday
we were told that because the neighbours behind us have already moved in - I wish I was them -
that the peg may have been removed becasue of that

have a good look as mentioned try having a "mummy" look cause its amazing what we can find without looking too hard

k ha a mummy look - took the torch and a shvel with me - sorry t the neighbours if i hav scared you but no luck cant find 2 of the pegs - and there goes $550 suppose gotta do it

Hi,

We're going to build with PD as well (this is our first time building a house), we're building a Smart Living/Access home. We want to install laminate timber flooring in our living areas but was advised by our CSC that PD do not usually offer the laminate flooring in Access, as with this type of flooring any flaws in the slab show up greatly. She said that the slab is allowed to have a few bumps within the standards and when we choose this type of flooring they are extremely evident.

Does anyone have a similar experience or could tell us more about this?
Also, anyone know how much they charge for real timber? We were quoted $7500 - $10k depending on the floorboards used.

Also, our land will be titled in July 2010. The other week, we went to have a look at the area within which our land is located and the fences are up and there are some works going on. I tried to search in the area and could not find our pegs. So we asked the developer's sales person and she said we would not be able to find them now because they're doing works in the area and to check again later. Should I be worried? Is it normal?

Sorry for all these questions, this forum has helped us a lot but there are still many things that we don't know

Prior to the land be titled they will re peg it best you check they are there before settlement on the land.

[quote="glockenspiel"]Hi,

We're going to build with PD as well (this is our first time building a house), we're building a Smart Living/Access home. We want to install laminate timber flooring in our living areas but was advised by our CSC that PD do not usually offer the laminate flooring in Access, as with this type of flooring any flaws in the slab show up greatly. She said that the slab is allowed to have a few bumps within the standards and when we choose this type of flooring they are extremely evident.

Does anyone have a similar experience or could tell us more about this?
Also, anyone know how much they charge for real timber? We were quoted $7500 - $10k depending on the floorboards used.

/quote]

If you need the timber or laminate flooring, get it done with your own contactor after handover. PD gave me very high price for my timber floor and told them to take it out. They will do floor coat on concrete for you. look for Boral, Trulock or Unique timber flooring. Supply and install will be around $90/m2

mervyn - I have been advised in the past by a number of other project builders that its better to do your own floors once you have had handover there is a company perfect timber floors which are a great company -

OK I have to give our surveyors credit they were out there today and the pegs are now in -yeah
Our neighbours site supervisor was great I called him yesterday and they were out there today and the rubbish that was they had put on our block but he was out there today and all rubbish removed... i would advise that if you have the same problem call the builders asap and keep onto them to remove all their crap

We had our laminate flooring laid after handover. The slab had a few pits and dips in it, and our SS had those filled, since he knew we were laying floorboards. The bigger problem was the lumps of paint and plaster everywhere. The cleaner went over the slab twice to remove those, but we still spent the better part of a day on our knees with scrapers before the flooring guys started, to make sure we had a level surface.

Kek

Thay should remove all that and clean before apply floor coat. have you done any new coat after you scrap? i am thinking to use laminated flooring. How much it cost? Do you have a pic to see??

thanks

We moved into our Porter Davis home at the start of December and I have never been more frustrated in my entire life. Our biggest issue was staff turnover and lack of comminication. We had 2 customer service officers and 3 Building Supervisors. I got to the point of e-mailing all of my issues directly to the customer service officer so I had a record. I got to the point where I needed to speak to someone higher up because I was not getting any firm action and nobody was willing to give me the name of the person I needed to speak to. I was told that my e-mails were being forwarded to the Building Supervisor and the Building Manager, but not once did the Building Manager contact me back to try and work through the issues.

And 6 months later we still have issues and still waiting for them to be resolved. We built with Porter Davis because they were recommended as one of the best, but if we had our time again we would use an independant builder.

My tip, is absolutely keep a record of what is going on, visit your new home as often as possible (our home was on the way to my husband's work and he drove past everyday - this was also frustrating when you are at the very final stages and nobody works on it for 6 weeks), leave one of your sliding windows closed, but not clicked at the latch. That way you can go through and have a really good look at your home and are well aware of all of the things that need to be fixed. Our building supervisor wasn't keen with us having inspections during the building process, so if we hadn't had the window ajar to enter over weekends we would not have picked up anywhere near half of the problems during the scheduled inspections.

Whilst I have heard some absolute disaster stories from people who have built with other building groups I admit our experience isn't as bad as that. Porter Davis do build beautiful homes. They let themselves down with a complete lack of service and follow up, are incredibly inflexible, inconsistent staffing, don't seem to appreciate that I have entrusted to them one of the biggest financial investments of my life and don't seem to take pride in their work which sees the way they finish things very rough.

Anyway, enough of my rant. I will not be building with Porter Davis again.