Wisdom Homes..........The Wise Choice

Hi Hills111,

The utility bills are paid by Wisdom is dependent on when the contract was signed.

I was told that in June/July 2012 they amended the contract and utility bills were payable by owners.

In my case, contract was based on the old one where Wisdom pays.

Hope this helps...

Cheers,

Have been following the various Wisdom Homes threads for ages and thought I would finally put in my 2 cents worth.
Firstly, thank you to everyone for sharing their experiences on here. It's been a big help in working out what questions to ask of the builders.

Has anyone been given an explanation by any builder of exactly why they think the owner should pay for the builder's use of water and power? Looks like just seeing the customer as a source of more profit rather than a valued customer to me.

I have actually decided NOT to build with Wisdom after getting some really unsatisfactory answers back from them about some of the contract details. Some of them were mentioned earlier on in this thread so I asked them specifically and received very vague assurances that it all works out so no need to worry. That's not the sort of contract I was comfortable signing especially after my bank, and also solicitor, were interested in the non answers.

We signed our contact in Feb 2012 so Wisdom should pay our bills, but we have paid the bills ourselves and asked Wisdom about reimbursement. No answer received yet from them. We also paid for a kitchen item which was not provided in full, asked for a refund and no answer from them about that too.

I guess once you have handover they don't really care if you have paid for something and you should get refunded.

Question for other Wisdom Home builders past and present, We have our plans in at council ATM (26th July Camden council, avg 4 -6 week approval process.) what is the time frame I can expect for construction to be completed, Wisdom have told me around months from now.
Building Manhattan 36.Thanks

Ours took 4 months from council approval to site start. Hope your not in a rush!

We took around 3 months from approval which seems to be wisdoms average if going off others posts on here.

Once the build starts they are pretty quick.

hey guys, been following this post, thanks for the advice, been a lot of useful information.

I have a question, does anyone know the benefits of going with a Private Certifier as opposed to a Council Certifier?

I know Wisdom Homes use a private certifier and I am trying to decide whether I need an Interim Occupancy certificate. After talking with Council, they're saying that if you go with the Council they are flexible with the period that this Interim Certificate lasts, however with Private Certifiers, they'll tend to have a stricter time about when this Interim Certificate will last.

Any advice from people who have got this far?

Hi Aheron,

After council approval, how long did it take Wisdom to get the final paperwork to you? I am wondering if the bulk of the delay is with Wisdom finalising the drawings.
I recently posted a bad review about the slowness of their admin process on productreview.com and their reply basically insinuated that the problem did not lie with them. So I sent Dominic an email saying that trying to pass blame on to customers was very poor customer relations and in his reply he said he didn't appreciate customers trying to drag his company name through the mud. So I don't think there will be any effort made to improve their slow admin process if the owner of the company is in denial.

hey guys,

Wisdom has a slow admin, but they are pretty quick once the build starts .
It took Wisdom 5 weeks from council approval to the day I had to sign all the final paperwork

Hi gregol02

I think it took around 2 months from council approval to receiving the final paperwork for us,but we also had about a week delay due to fulfilling council requirements.

Then you will sign off prelim final variations before final drawings and final tender are completed.

It definitely is the most frustrating part of the whole process, but it does get better once the actual build starts.

Good luck with it.

Hiya,

We got the council approval in first week of Jan and Final Documentation for sign-off end of March so roughly 10 weeks.
Then the construction finally began beginning of May. The initial ss never got in touch and past the 21 working days where no activity took place except for port-a-loo installation, we chased them again and the very next day our file was handed to a diff ss....best thing ever.
He has been absolute gold and our 47Sq double storey is now almost ready, we're just 5 months into the build...(don't wanna jinx it) but had to share that it actually does get better...

their admin side is horrendous - we paid the initial deposit for tender 31st March 2012 and the construction only started May 2013 - 14 months in admin is more than crazy !!! but on the plus side we got to save money during that period and use as down payment when the construction loan finally started coming through...

That's great news Menu. Like you said, the admin side of things is pretty slow and frustrating, but once you start building it's all systems go. Congrats, all the best for handover

Thanks Onewheel,

Actually I got some more good news, just have to share....can't even believe it
The SS told us today that PCI is likely to be in 2 weeks !!!!
and then granted that we're happy with everything, hand over will be 1 week after that....

so ecstatic! Woo Hoooo

PS - haven't been on here for a while but gotta say your house looks AMAZING !!!
well done and all the best

Hi All,

I have a meeting with wisdom homes to review the tender.
Once you have a meeting with them to review the tender how long do u get to review before signing the contract they were mentioning a $4000 deposit to get the plans drawn up at this point.
I thought the tender included them already.
Can anyone who has gone through the tender meeting and signed with wisdom give me a short description how long you have to decide if you wish to proceed with wisdom.

thanks

The tender quote is good for 6 months, but you can change it as much or little as you want til you are happy with it. If you ask for a new tender item, they will have to go away and cost it which might take time, obviously it takes no time to take an item off. The plans in the initial tender are just rough drawings. Once you accept your tender and pay your $4k, they then send your rough plans and tender to the architect to be properly drawn up, which then will be given to you to review and also sign off.

Once you are happy with the tender, then the architectural plans, they form part of the building contract. Once you sign this, you pay your 5% and the file is moved to admin to get your council building application started and schedule in your various appointments ( colours, kitchen, electrical etc)

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Has anyone that has built with wisdom had experience with adding an extra garage/extending a garage back into other living space or adding another roller door on a garage to give it drive through access to the backyard? And if so, what sort of costs did it involve?

We've added 1700mm in width to our garage for a cost of $8062 and a roller door in the rear was an additional $850.

Hi there,

we have requested a 3rd car garage with a single roller door at the rear for drive through access.

Additional garage was $11500 and as above the roller door was $850

Thank you both