Porter Davis homes

We have been told that our house will be late. Were are going to loose around $3k stamp duty deduction because of it. The house needed to be completed within 12mths to get the deduction. I am interested to see how this 'guarantee' is going to work. Our house waited 4 weeks for a brick layer (not bricks) and missed the guaranteed site start. We have had some rectification work done from contract errors and PD have started to let me know its because of this. (as if its my fault for wanting what I was expecting)

For all their PD points of difference, that supposedly add $14k value to you - I have not found anything to be worthwhile. PD 24/7 has only been updated once (at my request) and now it seems from the above they dont want to be held to their guarantee completion date

No, they have not given anything officially. With the building variations that we have signed they state something along the lines of "this will add 0 days to the constrution time" (not the exact words, I dont have it infront of me)

I have had delay claim letters for brick delays and for hiring my own inspector ...

Spewing that my build is taking so long!

Hi Yellow,

Unfortunately Kerry-ann is right. We only recently began including the ceiling insulation batts as a standard and it applies to all clients that signed up after this was introduced. For those clients receiving blow in as standard, ibe assured t does have the same R2.5 rating as the batts. However if you would like to change from blow in to batts, we are happy to do so but there will be a charge. Best to have a chat to your SS or CSA about it. To reassure you, there will not be any fire hazards as a result of the blow in. We ensure all down lights are heat protected to prevent this. Thanks, Jess.

Hi Victoria_g06,

Great to hear, yeah we won't have much of a back yard which both kind of a bad and good thing. Without having to read through all the posts (which I am slowly doing), how have you found PD to work with to date? I'm reading a lot of posts mentioning that the tender and contract signing is bloody nightmare with PD not revealing prices and not allowing you to take your contract home to read first etc. Plus making changes to the contract appear to be a no no also. Did you experience any of this? Be great to hear your experience (if you haven't repeated earlier).
Thanks[/quote]

I have found them very good although you really have to pay attention when you first go to the sales office and then to contract. Picking from the Access Range means you don't get a Tender appointment. You go straight from sales quote to contract signing! I found a few mistakes on contract signing and they just made a post contract variation to fix them.

The only thing I can't understand is when reaching contract I had the promotion Madison Corinthian Door with 4 small obscure glass parts which came to $315! Whereas my sidelight; Full glass obscured only was $90 odd dollars. I dont get that having less glass makes it more expensive?! I deleted the obscure glass and opted for the regular promotion door for $34.

I did find it a bit confusing that even at the colours appointment where all the prices were noted they still changed in the contract signing (Some slightly less, some slightly more) But what can you do? I had things I wanted and a few dollars more were disappointing but needed in the long run.

It is true that you cant take your contract home but they do give you five days to amend or cancel with very little cost. But honestly everything should have been sorted by then, again, you can make post contract variations if needed.

I hope this answers some of your questions. P.S I will say it again, You really have to have an eye for details, in my contract signing they had around 5 mistakes that I couldn't of changed later if I didn't pick them up!![/quote]

Hi Victoria_g06,

Thanks so much for the useful info! Still deciding but a lot the of people's comments don't give me much confidence

Hi Lunchtime,

I have read through your comments and understand your frustrations regarding delays and issues with the lack of updates in the 24/7 tool. I am sorry to hear that you have been experiencing these difficulties. Have you directed these issues to you Customer Care Administrator? Cheers, Jess.[/quote]

Thanks Jess - to be honest I gave up. On 24/7 it took them time to get my name right and I even had to send a screen dump to show where the error was. When they fixed it they decided to use my first and middle name rather than my surname. After 4 mths there is two photos in the gallary and none of my documents or colour selections have been uploaded. At this stage of the build it isnt worth worrying about

But what is a concern and if PD are genuine in learning from customer feedback is that dont tell me you are going to do something if you cant. Same goes with the guaranteed site start and 20 weeks to completion. We are struggling with paying rent and close enough to full mortgage while finding money for curtains, driveway etc and thought we would be helped with the guarantee but from what I read above I dont have any confidence that our safety net that I was told you provide with the completion guarantee will be met.

To be honest these are not the reasons that I signed up but they could have been nice extras but without the follow through it has turned the PD point of difference into a sore point as in my experience there is no difference.

Overall I have been very impressed with the quality of work and my SS and CSA team. These issues are trival when compared to what has been happening onsite. I would even go as far as to suggest that these items be removed altogether as they are not essential and only seem to take away from what has been a good experience overall

I would class myself as a PD advocate and have discussed my experiences with a couple of other potential customers and encouraged them to go with PD as the core product is very good. However this comes with the cavet of check all your documents, check the changes in specification from the display home to the final drawings and dont sign off on the plans until you have taken your final drawings too the display home to search out any differences. And finally IGNORE all marketing FLUFF and guarantees as it seems there is loop holes for everything

Hi everyone,

Just one quick question, not sure if anyone can help me with. We have purchased land in the Harcrest estate in Wantira South. As part of the estate convenants, all homes must be of 6 star energy rating. As PD are building homes in this estate, I asked a PD sales consultant whether a PD home built to meet this energy rating will need to have wall insulation bats and their answer was some homes will have it and some may not. I am a bit puzzled by how this can be the case. I assuming that all homes would require it and not just some and not others, and can a home achieve a 6 star energy rating without insulation bats in the walls? Any advice or expertise in the matter would be much appreciated.

I'm not sure how it can achieve it but the Lisbon 22 is a 5.8 star energy rated house, But I would put that up to maybe 6.2 -6.5 because I added Sarking to the roof and soundproof insulation to the bedrooms, I tried to get an updated report but unfortunately they can't do that..

Hello All,

For those following our progress, I just wanted to say that we have now signed the Tender Document (Yes we are going to be building with PD) and we have our Tile, Colour & Electrical appointments over the next 2 weeks followed by signing of the Contract a week or so later.

For those who are thinking of building with PD and have some concerns after reading the various posts on here I would like to take this opportunity to offer some advice.

1) If you have a specific question, try and locate the best person to answer it. I know that your CSA is the first point of contact (and by all means contact her first) but in parallel try and find the best person within PD and ask to speak to them as well.

To offer an example, we had some concerns about the actual design of our slab (as we are building something slightly away from the standard) and although we found our CSA helpful, she obviously did not have the relevant experience to satisfactory answer our questions. To overcome this, we asked to speak to one of their Engineers and although we were initially told that they were all busy, after some discussion we were finally able to speak to one.

Although the converstion with the Engineer only lasted 5-10 minutes, we were left feeling much more confident about proceeding with our build as our questions could be answered straight away without the need to go through a 3rd person which runs the risk of the information being unintentially distorted.

In regards to lack of prices at Hopetoun, which is an issue for most people, how we dealt with it was as follows:

1. Firstly, we visited Hopetoun on 2 seperate occasions (during the weekend) and reasonably accurately managed to select most of what we wanted upgraded. As a side note, for anyone not familiar with Hopetoun yet, please do not leave visiting there until your colour / electrical appointments. You will create unnecessary stress for yourself !!

2. During the same weekends, we also visited National Tiles and was able to get a feel for what tiles we liked. Although, pricing is available from them due to the number of people who are there at the weekend you may not get much time to speak to a member of staff. However, you can easily select the tiles you like on your own and before you leave, politely ask how much (roughly) they cost. With this info and the floor plan of your home (which you can get from your Sales person) you can reasonably accurately calculate the cost of your possible tile selections prior to actually having your official appointment.

3. For of the bigger upgrade items as well as any structural items we wanted changing, we communicated this information to our Sales person who was able to update the initial quote and give us an idea of price. As an example, although we hadn't chosen our exact brick, we were confident that we wanted to select one from a particular category, so as a result was able to get a price in advance.

4. For the lesser expensive items which we wanted to upgrade (Doors, Window Glass, Benchtops, etc) we communicated this information to our CSA prior to our Tender Appointment. These items were then included on the Tender contract so we had an actual figure. From Tender onwards, structual changes cannot be made but all other selections can be altered if necessary.

We now have our Tiles & Colour appointment approaching in the next few weeks, and (with the exception of the wall colour and a few small items) have our chosen selections already prepared.

Hopefully then, unless prices have changed a lot over a few weeks, we should have a reasonable idea of what we are expected to pay prior to our contract and if our budget cannot stretch to that amount at least we will have time in advance to make a decision rather than wait until we attend our contract appointment.

Hope this helps...

Chorlton