Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Aug 02, 2011 3:56 pm Hi All, I'm new to this forum and have found this very helpful for people building their first home. I bought a block of land (400 m 2 with 12.5 frontage and 32 depth) at Eucalypt Estate in Wollert a couple of months ago and backed out of a deal with M'con because of very high pricing and their arrogance. After months of research I have decided to build the Albany 35 with Bridegwater Facade with Carlisle Homes and put my initial deposit of $1,000 with them last Saturday. So far, the Sales Consultant at Summer Hill (Epping) Estate has been very helpful and has been giving me all the information and am very happy with their transparent approach. I also went to their Studio in Mulgrave to have a look at the standard and promotional inclusions and they are very good and on par with whatever M'con offered to me earlier. In terms of upgrades, we have asked for the below 1) Provision for Fireplace at the Family Area (Extra $1200) 2.) Shower option in the powder room in the ground floor (Extra $3600). 3.) 300 mm platform in the Home Theatre (Extra $800) 4.) U shaped Kitchen (Extra $876). The total price estimate came upto approx. $287,500 including the above mentioned upgrades and fixed site costs. The Sales consultant also gave us $10,000 off on the Fixed Site costs of $16,000 which is really a good deal. Please have a look at the floor plan of Albany 35 and check out their standard and promotional inclusions (As displayed Sale T range) and let me know your thoughts. http://www.carlislehomes.com.au/find-a- ... ery/search http://www.carlislehomes.com.au/promotions Also, is anyone else building with Carlisle Homes in the North and how is the experience so far? Appreciate your help Cheers, Nish Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 2Aug 02, 2011 6:03 pm Hi Nishanth, Welcome to the forum you might find the below thread pretty handy viewtopic.php?f=31&t=24223&hilit=carlisle it's a thread for all Carlisle home buyers..... We're building with Carlisle too up in the north and so far the experience has been quite good except for a few hiccups here and there.... but overall I'd say they are really good builders with quality products and good pricing as well. Their inclusions are really good and I love their floor plans too! The Best part I found about them was that they are very transparent, no false promises. Albany 35 is a great choice!!! love the gallery! Do keep us all posted on your progress and experience! AJ Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 3Aug 03, 2011 4:34 pm AJ, Thanks for your reply:) It's good to hear about your building experience with CH so far. So what house are you building and when are they expected to complete the construction? Also, what are some of the hiccups that you had faced so far and any suggestions or things I need to be aware of before I go in for the colour selection. I have made an appointment for the colour selection including tiles and electricals on Tuesday 16 Aug'11 and the person that would be assisting is Vicki. How was your experience at Spectra? Cheers, nishanth Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 4Aug 03, 2011 5:23 pm We're building Madison 27, I'm not too sure about the completion of our contruction however we are now in our last stage so hopefully shouldn't be too long. Well some of the stuff to be aware about, with I guess any builder, is to read every bit of detail that you sign on coz we found a lot of errors in the paperwork (for eg. some of our colour selections didnt match the tender or contract for that matter ) and we had to chase them quite a bit for that. Although in the end it was all taken care of. Also just recently we realised that our garage didn't get wrapped with waterproofing , although other builders don't wrap the garage at all, Carlisle includes this in their Standard inclusions , and still missed out. We're debating on this one with our SS. We'll see how it goes .... Other than that our sales experience was amazing we found our sales rep. extremely helpful , honest and always approachable.Our spectra experience was good too, reason for that I'd say is the fact that Carlisle have a huge selection range in their standards, you can pretty much go for all standard selections and still make your home as pretty as the display. Things to be prepared for is a backup list like especially for bricks and tiles have a second preference, so that if your first choice of tiles or bricks is not available you always have a backup plan. Also choose whatever you like at the colour selection because you won't really know how much it costs until the tender so you can always backout at tender and select from their standards if you go over your budget. Other than that have an image of what colours you already like , the Spectra staff are very good at helping you decide if you're confused.You can always visit Spectra and have a browse for as long as you want before the 'D' Day . I can't really think of anything else, other than Enjoy Yourself at the Colours!!!! Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 5Aug 21, 2011 9:19 am Thanks AJ for the Carlisle forum... Nishanth - Planning to Go with Carlisle how did you find them ? How are their estimates on Site cost and rock removal? You said they took off $ 10000 from $16000? Do you think its worth $6000 for slabs , site cost & rock removal.... am a newbie trying to understand how they work at the fixed cost on the house contract. regards Harry Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 6Sep 06, 2011 2:57 pm Hi ajanta, Thanks for your valuable feedback on the colour selection. We have finsihed our colour selection with Carlisle Homes and went through the tender last week. We did make a few changes and have the contract signing next week. We did upgrade quite a few important things and spent around $20,000 extra. Anyways we will see how it all looks like once they have built the house and keep you posted. If everything goes well they will be commencing construction in the last week of October. Have they started constructing your house? Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 7Sep 06, 2011 3:06 pm Hi Harry, We were initially supposed to build with M'con and there price were so high. So we backed out at contract stage and lost our initial deposit of $3000. They were supposed to charge us $24,000 for the site costs. So I guess, Carlisle Homes is better than them. I really don’t know if the slab is going to cost $6k but they are giving me a H class slab and cost include rock removal, site preparation and other stuff required to make the block ready to build. Once, I backed out from Metricon, I’ve been to every other builder and their prices were high as well. Then after months of research we settled in for Carlisle Homes. Also, a few of my friends have built through Carlisle last year and I’ve been to their homes and the quality of work is good. So I guess you have to make up your mind and decide which builder you would like to go ahead with as each person experience might be different. So I have decided to use a private inspector to conduct independent inspection at every stage of the construction process to get things right from the start and they have quoted me $2,400 for that which I think is really worth when you are investing a lot of money. I’m building a double storey as my block is 12.5m wide and 32 m deep. Do you know if adsl2+ and fibre optic is available in Eucalypt Estate. Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 8Sep 06, 2011 3:21 pm nishanth.r Hi ajanta, Thanks for your valuable feedback on the colour selection. We have finsihed our colour selection with Carlisle Homes and went through the tender last week. We did make a few changes and have the contract signing next week. We did upgrade quite a few important things and spent around $20,000 extra. Anyways we will see how it all looks like once they have built the house and keep you posted. If everything goes well they will be commencing construction in the last week of October. Have they started constructing your house? Hi Nishanth, Yes CH is almost at the end of our build now.... we have our new home inspection date as 29/09 so hopefully should be in our new house by mid next month... Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 9Sep 19, 2011 2:40 pm AJ, That's so exciting. Hope the final inspection goes well and you move in at the earliest. I think I saw your blog yesterday and guess what? I've selected most of the things that you have gone for..Sheer coincidence.. Tiles - Monument Ivory (Porcelain 600 x 600) Glass Splashback - Sparkling Shiraz Overhead Cupboards - White Perspex Pot Drawers - Brushwood I think.. But the external is a bit different Roof - Sambucca Bricks - Austral Fawn (Cat 1a) Please let me know how the tiles are as I would like to know:) Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 10Sep 19, 2011 3:24 pm OMG that's so cool..... I would love to see how the splashback looks in your kitchen.....we went for that splash back coz we loved it in the Atlantique display at Marriott Waters and wanted the same look somehow it looks a bit different in our kitchen.... maybe it's the lights don't know The tiles are really good to look at , all shiny at the moment.... Will know soon what it feels like when we walk on it on the 29th haha! Austral Fawn is a really good looking brick!! do you have an approximate site start date yet?? Do keep us updated on the pics... Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 11Sep 23, 2011 9:42 am nishanth.r Hi ajanta, Thanks for your valuable feedback on the colour selection. We have finsihed our colour selection with Carlisle Homes and went through the tender last week. We did make a few changes and have the contract signing next week. We did upgrade quite a few important things and spent around $20,000 extra. Anyways we will see how it all looks like once they have built the house and keep you posted. If everything goes well they will be commencing construction in the last week of October. Have they started constructing your house? Hi Nish, Just a great news..... A CLE who was useless, unhelpful and had attitude issues is getting a sack from CH. She is leaving CH today. I don't think others would be worse like her. So you would be alright going forward. Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 13Sep 23, 2011 10:03 am Edited... 26/2 - Sales 23/3 - Colours 31/3 - Tender 14/4 - Contract 7/5 - Taps 12/6 - Site start 15/6 - Slab 27/6 - Frame 1/8 - Lockup/Fixing 29/9 - PCI 25/10 - Handover Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 14Sep 29, 2011 8:46 am ajantakadam OMG that's so cool..... I would love to see how the splashback looks in your kitchen.....we went for that splash back coz we loved it in the Atlantique display at Marriott Waters and wanted the same look somehow it looks a bit different in our kitchen.... maybe it's the lights don't know The tiles are really good to look at , all shiny at the moment.... Will know soon what it feels like when we walk on it on the 29th haha! Austral Fawn is a really good looking brick!! do you have an approximate site start date yet?? Do keep us updated on the pics... Hi Ajanta! I am Ramya.. Nishanth's better half! I went on to your blog and have been drooling over your pics!! You know after we made all our selections I was really sus about what its gonna look like, and when I saw all our similar selections, I let out a sigh of relief... I personally thought your kitchen is the highlight (as I hope will be ours! )... We hope to start sometime at the end of October! (fingers crossed!!)..Will keep all posted!! Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 15Sep 29, 2011 7:18 pm Hi Ramya, Thanks for your compliments.We've updated the pics from our PCI on our blog.I couldn't wait to switch the downlights on in the kitchen to make sure we had selected the exact same splashback that we fell in the love with in the first place and yipee it does look the same now...wow lights make so much of a difference hehehehe......It was all good.... Can't wait to see your site start.....believe me once the site starts Carlisle build at a Superman speed Keep us updated Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 16Sep 30, 2011 4:00 pm Hi Ajanta! And the drooling continues! I love the way the tiles and the splashback look... Amazing how lights can make so much of difference ! Will definitely keep u all posted once we get the site start date... cheers, Ramya..!! Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 18Dec 19, 2011 1:06 pm Hi Nishanth...hows your build going ? Picture update please. 26/2 - Sales 23/3 - Colours 31/3 - Tender 14/4 - Contract 7/5 - Taps 12/6 - Site start 15/6 - Slab 27/6 - Frame 1/8 - Lockup/Fixing 29/9 - PCI 25/10 - Handover Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 19Dec 22, 2011 2:32 pm xanthrope Hi Nishant, Congratulations on your build - hope you get to enjoy the process - I certainly did..... Re: Carlisle Homes Albany 35 20Dec 22, 2011 2:35 pm xanthrope Hi Nishant, Congratulations on your build - hope you get to enjoy the process - I certainly did..... Thanks for that.. The frame is up and the roofing is almost done..Exciting times ahead. Hope you have an awesome Xmas and prosperous New Year:) We were lucky in that our old house was so small (86 square metres) compared to the new house, they were able to take enough readings around the old backyard house before… 8 37143 Carlisle use to sneak a water resistant "Performance Solution" into their contracts. Have you checked your contract for same? 4 10227 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74708 |