Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 20, 2013 3:02 am Hi, Hubby and I have found two house designs that we like, one with Rawson homes and one with Mastertons. For those who have found a builder, how did you decide? where did you do your research? what should i look out for? Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 2Jan 20, 2013 6:22 am when i first started on the road to building our dream home i just listened to the sales people and well six months down the track and after two warnings saying we were going to leave and find someone else we did.
as i was not happy with the first builder i started looking around at other builders and came across one adenbrook that was building their display home and they saw us looking at the construction and offered for us to visit the home then and there and to come back anytime. very impressed . then i did research looked on the net etc, checked out other homes they were building. spoke to people who had built with them. received prices from other builders etc. in the mean time while still with the other builder which the last straw came when we asked for a price again and they told us they had more important customers and we would not get our dream home. being very upset rang the lady at adenbrook(the display house we saw in construction) (this was at 10 to 5 at night_ told us to drive over and they will wait introduced to owners of the company .they also invited us to speak with homeowners that have built with adenbrook and meet with their design guy and not to forget they also looked at our land etc and our journey began with adenbrook 1st august and now we have frame and a roof very happy. we are buildig a custom house with adenbrook we originally built with masterton homes 26 years ago and only just now selling the house it has been good. did not go with masterton as they do not build here.but were impressed with their display homes in sydney long winded sorry but wanted to let you know there are good builders out there among the bad and taking your time and researching (you have already started by joining here) helps and ask lots of questions . it is a very exciting time where abouts are you building Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 3Jan 20, 2013 7:06 am Have a look at their inclusions, and the house design. What makes best use of space, light? You will find good and bad stories with all builders. So don't be off put by some of journeys some people have had. Both of those companies are reputable companies. 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 We moved into our Rawson Home in December. We found them to be great, their inclusions are great, their prices are fixed - no nasty surprises, our build was completed a week shy of 6 months and although there were times I wish our build was faster, at the end of the day, Rawson have delivered us a quality home, with quality finishes. Would I build with them again, absolutely! Feel free to have a look at my blog. Also have a look at the thread Benham 33 as that is the Rawson thread. Built the Seaview 36 with Rawson Homes - Read about it on my blog http://lamaisondemorgan.blogspot.com.au/ Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 5Jan 21, 2013 8:44 am HI Everyone, Thanks for your tips. 1stTimebuilding2012 - I'm not put off by the bad stories, i'm actually interested in them as they help me with my decision making. I was reading some threads on Homeone forum and it looks like they remove any threads which contain bad stories. Wouldn't this mean the forum is slightly subjective? I may need to look into Product Review and a few other sites to get a more balanced view. 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. Re: Rawson homes vs Masterton 6Jan 21, 2013 8:51 am 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? 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 16741 Just started the Build process for Chifley 42 with Rawson homes, will keep you all posted with the Build progress. 0 2463 Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74714 |