Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 3Jan 20, 2013 7:06 am Built a Hawthorne 31 with EB nessjeffdreamhouse.blogspot.com.au Building an investment now with New Living homes... We are at nearly finished... Just landscaping and driveway to go! Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 4Jan 20, 2013 8:19 am Built the Seaview 36 with Rawson Homes - Read about it on my blog http://lamaisondemorgan.blogspot.com.au/ Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 7Jan 21, 2013 9:11 am janefromoz what do people think about this post? viewtopic.php?f=31&t=56094&hilit=build+with+rawson Do you think it's fake? (i.e someone from Rawson placing the post]. The reasons I'm suspicious is because they have only posted one post and have not answered anyones questions. It seems very OTT (over the top), and they even referenced a staff members name (which I thought you can't). It also sounds a little 'sales' like, [ie. "your dream experience"]. They state they are getting calls at night and getting answers straight away whenever they had a question, this seems a little fake? Sounds like it was posted by the staff member herself or by the staff member's mother. I just googled and the person is now working for another builder and is no longer working for Rawson. Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 8Jan 21, 2013 9:32 am I'm building with rawson and actually found their price quite reasonable. I was looking at two other builders at the time and thought Rawson were expensive but then when I calculated what inclusions I wanted and what the other builders are charging, Rawson were the cheapest of the three as they included all these as standard wheras the other builders werent. Their admin was a pain, but which company in the building industry isnt. I'm looking at landscaping at the moment and I've had companies that dont return calls, take a few weeks to get back to me with simple answers to questions. I wonder if they actually want my business. Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 9Jan 21, 2013 9:49 am Quote: Only started researching Rawson so far. Looks like their admin/tender process can be long, someone mentioned 8 months, and frustrating. They have good inclusions, but are expensive overall. Our tender process was 136 days. I know that others have gone over this. You need to look at the other people that are at 8 months and see why they are there. Friends of ours are building with Rawson at the moment. They have owned their block of land for years and are not in a hurry at all. they are happy for Rawson to take their time and they do not worry about chasing for anything. We were totally different. Had a deadline, had settled on our land a couple of months prior and were already renting. We wanted to beat the 6 month stamp duty deadline and needed to get a slab down asap. There are others whose blocks have not registered yet, so cannot build, so i would not take 8 months as the standard. I would totally disagree with you on Rawson being expensive. I think their inclusions are premium compared to most of the project builders. We were going with Mac Jones before and what we had to pay as an upgrade for Rawson includes are standard. The size of house that we are getting for the money is fantastic. Our house is 395 m2 or 43 squares and we are paying roughly $1,000m2 for the house - this does not include floor coverings or driveways as we took those out and we will do them after handover. Rawson is fair in their upgrade costs and they gave a very fair credit for the items that we removed from the contract. Modified Fernside 38 Rawson Homes Blog: http://www.thehousethatmatandjenbuilt.blogspot.com Build Thread: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60501 Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 10Jan 21, 2013 10:47 am Jen1977 You need to look at the other people that are at 8 months and see why they are there. *raises hand* That'll be me. If you want to ignore the last two months that's fair - we stopped bugging the salesguy regularly about 2 months ago, so they may have written us off (which is a good assumption on their part - not many people would be comfortable with a 6-month tender). So call it 6 months. The first 3 months were because ... well, they just took a really long time, 2x as long as stated in the original contract we'd signed. Then when we got the result back, they had missed a few features & items we had asked for in the first place. It took maybe 2 weeks of back-and-forth to find the stuff they actually wouldn't include (the salesguy was very apologetic about that - I think they had changed policy in between him checking with his manager & out tender going through estimation), and after that had been ascertained we sent a detailed list of changes we wanted made to the design (the main things were using particular double-glazed windows & wanting high ceilings). Now I think their process might work by our job then going on the bottom of the pile, rather than someone making what would have been minor amendments to what was very nearly done. So about 6-8 weeks after that we asked if there had been any progress because we now wanted to include a shed out the back & make some internal rearrangements; we were told they were still getting prices for the windows so it wouldn't make any difference, and so we asked for these changes too. I'm thinking that, again, asking for those changes probably put it on the bottom of the pile. If you don't want anything different from standard, apart maybe from adding an extra room or changing the direction a door opens, then I imagine you'd be fine. But there seems to be a really long delay in admin; such that, if anyone manages to miscommunicate with anyone else internally, your stuff gets put onto the bottom of a pile & your wait resets. This might NOT be how it really is; however, observing the "black box" from outside, that's been the end-result for us. Quote: I would totally disagree with you on Rawson being expensive. I definitely agree with this. And they didn't charge a lot for the floorplan rearrangements we asked for, either. We've had 4 building companies quote us now (ie. solid numbers, not base-price plus some "standard prices" based on average costs), so I think we've got a decent "sample" for the purposes of comparison. Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 11Jan 21, 2013 10:54 am Forg you just have to be difficult don't you Rawson yes their admin period is long and painful, and I have been tearing my hair out waiting for bricks on my build, I found them to be totally upfront and honest about their costs the whole way through. There was no hidden surprises. The sales that we went through were fantastic and very friendly, to the point that I can still ring up now and have a chat. We were given an estimate before we paid the tender fee. We were $5000 out from this because of us needing an H2 slab and this was not included. We paid to have a tender from another builder and from what we were estimated it came back $15000 more than that and when we balked we were given a credit, but once we paid the fee and got the consolidated tender it went up again. That doesn't happen with Rawson. The tender that you get it fixed! When we went to site, our slab was smaller than the previous house we were going to build as the new one is double storey and the previous one was single. We needed 80m of piering. With Rawson it does not matter how much we used, it was covered in their fixed price tender. With the other company we only had 50m allowed and would have had to pay the additional at $80 metre. You need to compare apples with apples Rawson may look expensive on the outset as they give you a complete price. They do not give you a base plus price. The base price always adds up and you will probably pay $100,000 over the base price. Modified Fernside 38 Rawson Homes Blog: http://www.thehousethatmatandjenbuilt.blogspot.com Build Thread: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=60501 4 16736 Just started the Build process for Chifley 42 with Rawson homes, will keep you all posted with the Build progress. 0 2452 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74709 |