Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 321Aug 17, 2013 10:25 am Hi everyone, We need to be aware that we are signing the HIA contract, which favours the builder. All the building companies will use the same contract but some will have additional conditions, which are also in their favour not ours. Due to the length of time it takes from initial tender to draw up plans and have them finally approved, this process can take months and during this time there could be increases for the house price, the cost of materials and labour. All of these extra expenses the builder will ask the customer to pay, and that is included in their contract. That's why it is impossible to get a "fixed price" tender or even a "we want to know the total cost up front" because it is bound to increase and that will be passed onto us. I guess we have to allow an extra 20% on top of the budget for these things. Don't forget fencing, letterbox, clothes line, landscaping, etc and the list of expenses keeps getting l o n g e r ....... Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 322Aug 18, 2013 8:32 pm Hello friends (esp. old-timers here: Carak, Lilac, Mars, UpSize!) this is a quick message from ol' London town where we have been travelling (mainly business, but a bit of fun tossed in!) and have been off the forum for way too long (sorry)! Have now just caught up with everyone's story and it seems you have all been busy! Great to see some have advanced, but frustrating for others who are still awaiting answers, etc!! We are still generally on hold too, sadly. Council hasn't determined whether they will allow a similar design in the estate (they don't really want large two-storey homes like the "Glenleigh" - and the team at Kurmond have also been on hold with it all. They are happy to submit our plans, but we know it will come back from Council requiring changes, so we prefer the changes are made now. Long story short - we have a bit of sorting out to do and we will need to call P directly when we get back and have some action taken. A short note today, but just wanted to say I continue to follow you all! Love those colours UpSize and Lilac - your photos make me feel that it "can" be all worth it in the end! Mars - how is that Home Theatre planning coming on? Carrick - surely we can both get out of the planning phase soon?!! Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 323Aug 19, 2013 2:23 pm London Town! Sounds great, love to travel. Haven't done any since before the kids, and after building a house don't see it happening in the near future. Enjoy your holiday/work, hopefully more fun than work. We are moving on, I talked to our colour consultant today and am trying to organise internal & external on 1 day, DH can't keep taking days off here and there. Someone has to keep working to pay for this house!!! Looks like we are going to choose our tiles this weekend and then have our colour appt on Monday. Exciting...all becoming real. Still need to finalise the fireplace details but hopefully that all gets done is week. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 324Aug 19, 2013 3:28 pm True...building a house we won't have a chance to holiday for a little while at least. Unreal, Does the council prefer single storey homes or what? I haven't done much on the home theatre planning, but I've been considering options for a PVR-enabled NAS. Or maybe it's just overkill as my DW says! Good news is that I called P this afternoon, and he immediately said not to worry about price increases because the contract will be fixed. He said to remove the special clause from the contract regarding the tender expiry. It's so good to be able to speak directly, as sometimes the sales crew just follow the standard process. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 325Aug 19, 2013 7:06 pm It's all happening Posted on the Kurmond Facebook Page - An Event Saturday 7th September 2013 Homeworld V - Kurmond Homes Grand Opening Hartigan Avenue, Kellyville (Off Windsor Road) Come down meet the Kurmond Team and view the 3 amazing new display homes Live radio, jumping castle, sausage sizzle and more! Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 326Aug 20, 2013 5:49 pm OMG, we are at contract stage, reading through the waffle??? We sent it through to the solicitor for checking, to see if she has any thing to add. They say 36 wks to build, is that the standard for a two storey home? Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 329Aug 26, 2013 12:38 pm Hello Kurmondites, Well it is only early stages for us but we have taken the first steps on the road to a new Sierra 31 (modified and enlarged). Hey Mars78, I will be following your build closely - fellow Sierra builder. I truly thank everyone for their information and comments, which have been so helpful to us. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 330Aug 26, 2013 8:03 pm Welcome new kurmonders. Today was a busy day, we did our external colour appointment. Finished all the colourings, so many things, went through a few internal decisions as well as DH can't keep taking dys off. Next step is the contracts and the house loan finalisation. Our bank manager came back today from his 5 wks holiday, called him at 9:05am, he was on his way to work. He was great though, as expected. Hopefully all numbers add up as expected and move on to internals, in a week or two. Mars where are you at? We also meet with P from coral reef pools to finalise pool location. That's moving forward too. Slowly, slowly! Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 331Aug 26, 2013 8:26 pm Hi All, We have our internal colour appointment this week. It's going to be a full on day, as we'll sign the contract, do electrical layout, carpet, kitchen etc etc. I can't afford to take more days off, so I guess it's ok. Big Mama, welcome! Glad to know someone else who is building the Sierra. Could I ask what changes you have made? How many squares has it come to? Upsize, good to hear you're progressing well. Any hurdles or tough decisions with the external colours? We made a few changes post-appointment as some colours weren't as we expected. But the colour girls are really good. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 332Aug 26, 2013 10:19 pm Mars it is hard organising with all the appointments having to be weekdays. DH also can't afford to take many more days off. Thinking of face timing him on the internals to save us a day. Have to admit I did feel like we were in after market sales in a car yard. You know where they show you all the extras & upgrades. The surprises I found were frosting on front door, upgrade door handle, fly screens on doors, laundry door with window, that's all I can think off, should get the variation cost sheet by end of week. Any idea on how much extra these will all be. What did you end up adding to you variations list. Bit worried about internals now, a few discrepancies have already arisen about kitchen design. Have to wait until kitchen design drawn up. Good luck with your internal design, let me know how your kitchen design goes. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 333Aug 27, 2013 8:58 am Upsize, I know some of the upgrades were costly. We ended up with almost $5K after the external colour appointment but much of that was the facade. The frosting of the front door panes was $300, so we opted out. But then realised it would cost just as much for film later on so we added it back. $150 for the front door angular set. The laundry door with window was also expensive, around $500 for the half window and blind. We didn't get fly screen doors as we'll do this post-handover. We also added a whirly bird, letter box and upgraded to the B&D Panel Lift which is quieter. I heard they have now changed Garage Door supplier to Steel Line. My experience with Steel Line is that they're quite noisy. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 334Aug 28, 2013 11:41 pm Hiccups have to happen... Today our bank asked us not to sign the contract until all variation costs have been finalised. Then they will approve the loan once a fixed price is determined. Can understand where they are coming from, I did try to organise this upfront by trying to include a lot of things we wanted in original tender but there were items we were told to wait until such and such appointment. Have to wait and see how K wants to move forward. Hopefully we can do all appointments and then settle on contract. Sent email, now waiting to see way forward. Another joy of building, banks! Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 335Aug 29, 2013 5:22 pm Long time no post Welcome to all the new Kurmondites, really looking forward to following your builds. We have been having a bit of a 'challenging' time lately. Looks as though we will have to remove the room that we added to our design. To keep the room and tp have the step down that we have to have because of the slop was over the amount that the bank has approved. Would have love to have kept it but without knowing if we have put enough in provisional amounts for the internal selections, it is better to remove the room than have to go without the inclusions that will make the house amazing. The house will still be very big, just not huge Finally had a meeting with P and B yesterday to workout/redesign the back area of the house now the extra room has been deleted plus work out the most economical way of doing the step down. B is working on the plans and we should have them Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. P has assured us that we will come in on budget. Feeling very tired and drained this is taking so long. Fingers crossed it all works out. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 336Aug 29, 2013 6:26 pm Like Carak - Long time no post Like Carak - We have been going around in circles - but more Council than Kurmond I'm time this on the Euro train between London and France (amazing technology!) and back home to Sydney on Sunday!!! A little birdie tells me the spring weather for Father's Day will be perfect when we get there. We hope to iron out the bugs that we've encountered with our design where Council doesn't like two-storey homes in the estate, and we have to make some compromises. They will approve a double-storey, but "prefer" we didn't go that way. Kurmond have said they will design whatever we want (great), but to have things knocked back by the time the plans get to Council is not something we want. Our "neighbour" about three streets away in the same estate has had his home (double-storey) in Council for 12 months!! It finally was approved (with significant façade modifications) last week .. we don't have the time or energy to wait 12 months in Council Separately - here's a rant - I don't understand why builders (not just K, but all builders) won't provide a complete price - inclusive of all internals / externals before we sign contracts. Banks only want fixed price contracts anyway (as you heard UpSize) - so how do we get "fixed price" when there are so many provisionals or uncertainties before signing? I just don't get it - perhaps someone more experienced in this can tell us ?? Like Carak said - welcome to all the new Kurmondites, really looking forward to following your builds. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 337Aug 30, 2013 12:46 pm G'day everyone Our Kurmond build is progressing along okay. We've signed off on the plans and we're up to tender acceptance today but was a bit blown away yesterday to find that we have to sign a contract and then do colour studio and the electrical appointment. This doesn't seem quite right to me so just wondering what everyones thoughts are? I spoke to our mortgage broker and he's indicating that the bank won't touch this unless we have the fixed price contract and all variations etc are included (otherwise we pay out of pocket for those). It's also on the other hand worrying that once you've signed the contract then you're locked in and K can name any price they want for any further variations - they hold all the cards! What's everyones experience with this? Is this normal for builders to do? Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 338Aug 30, 2013 1:14 pm We have just signed out contract. P offered a fixed price guarantee until 28th February which is more than enough time for the registration of our land. I think we got carried away with some of the upgrades yesterday. Next week we'll know the damage, and perhaps have to trim a few items. Some of the items upgraded to - 1) LED downlights in lieu of compact fluorescent downlights. These are high quality dimmable types so I think its worth the $45 per light charge. My electrician would charge roughly the same to do it after handover anyway. R the electrician was great to deal with. 2) Softclose drawers 3) Draining grooves to stone benchtop next to undermount sink 4) Silver range toilet - soft close lid 5) Silver range basins 6) Cornices - the standard is just so plain! All up it took about 4 hours...not too bad. E from the colour studio was extremely good in helping with the colour selections. Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 339Aug 30, 2013 11:54 pm Mckz this is the exact same issue we have just stumbled upon. Be interested to know what others do? Do you use your own out of pocket to pay for contract deposit and then obtain fixed price for loan final approval? Re: Building with Kurmond Homes 340Aug 31, 2013 2:41 pm Thanks for the warm welcome everyone To those who have island benches (especially waterfall edges) where have you put extra power points in the island? Mars78 - we have extended the house 1m to give extra space to bed2, bed3, activity room and garage. This allows us to put an extra BIR/linen in activity room. We are also adding two sky windows to that space to flood it with natural light. As we don't have the plans yet, I don't know the finished size but I am guessing 33sq. We also had to trim 40cm from the width at the very front, so we have juggled that by shifting the hallway slightly to the left and decreasing 20cm from master bedroom. The priority for us was to make each of the kids' bedrooms large, plus we get extra internal storage and some space in the garage for gym equipment. We are also doubling the alfresco size and adding an outdoor shower. Well...at least that's the plan so far... Ask for references and speak to them. If they are defensive or try to avoid the request, walk. 1 74709 I would never build with Fowler homes. I built with them in 2021 and till date maintenance issues are pending. All their existing trades and businesses don't work with… 14 105573 Hi there! Putting the feelers out there for those who have (or almost) built with Arli homes! Interested in your experiences who've built from their stock home designs… 0 23492 |