Building with Kurmond Homes

Hi guys!

how is everything going ?

we don't have insurance yet .
i have complained to everyone i could. nothing helps.
i spoke to one of the operational managers today and he told me about how they are trying to do their best with everything.
I am so sick with them that I cannot even laugh at that.

i guess if you are a Kurmond's client then just suck it up and wait ...

Thats it.. nothing is in our hand! They made us handicaps...

hey 1building

what's happening with your home?
anything new?

Brick work Done ( took 2 months tp finish - in fact it is 2-3weems job)

Roofing - Done
Gutter fascia - Done

Still plenty things left to reach to the pre-lining stage ( been told 3 weeks away)

wow! that's great!
I am so happy for you. It does take long but at least you can see the progress with your own eyes!

Can't wait when our house will be at the same stage!
When I talked to the operational manager yesterday they told me that even though they have a clause in the contract that it may take them 4 weeks to commence on site after all paperwork is sorted, they will commence right away in my case as everything has been ordered and such.
I hope it is not their usual bla bla bla and they will commence this month.

how often do you go to site?
do you have any pictures you can post?

hi the dream
how is going there?

they told me yesterday that 13-14 other jobs are waiting for the insurance certificate. and they only apply for it after you sign the contract.
so whenever you are given the contract, don't waste time and sign it right away as long as you are happy with plans and tender.

they say that the delays is actually our fault as we didn't sign the contracts right a way. we didn't do that as we wanted to sign final plans first and they were delaying them. they told us that they could amend the plans late .. bla bla bla.. but as far as I understand they charge for all post-contractual changes...

anyway they will always blame us for everything.... just be aware.

nada17 So we got our 'final construction' plans last week (no contract yet).

SO..
1 . my laundry sink moved (again.... literally every time i get my plans they move my stupid sink and i have to tell them to put it back).
2. I now have a retaining wall... i got council approval 12 weeks ago.. and all of a sudden i get a retaining wall.
3. my porch roofline moved because of 'constructability' ...

I still don't have a vari price on all my drop edge beams (which they gave me a vari for when it went to council, but clearly they did that wrong too).

so.. that was a week ago, and I still don't have my revised plans, or vari, or contract.

Every time i ask for a start date they keep fobbing me off. And now my CSO isn't answering my calls after I sent a rather pointed email last week.

I'm so over it. I'm actually considering walking away at this point. Deposit or not.

ohh that sounds soooo familiar... they ketp moving things around in our plans all the the time. so every time we got the plans we needed to check every single line again. even if we didn't ask them to change anything in that particular plan or room. as if we didn't check they would say "oh but signed the plans!"

by the way, they wanted to overcharge me for dropped edge beam! they had one area on plans and they put a bigger area into variation!
so definitely compare the variation with the plans.
also check with your DA concent from council if they allow to have retaining walls. my council clearly states - no retaining walls allowed.

my CSO also almost never picks up the phone. she is always not at her desk, or at lunch, or away for other reasons. I ended up sending an email to one of the owners yesterday.
I also sent an angry email to Terry (name changed) (again). she said she doesn't take it personally as she believes it is my frustration taking.. bla bla bla.
I cannot believe that they don't even think that their crapy service makes clients frustrated. they probably think that they are doing a good job....

as for the start date: add about 2 months to the date when you sign the contract.
it is been 2 weeks since we signed ours and we cannot even apply to our bank for formal approval. and without formal banks approval Kurmond will not start their 4 weeks within which they have to go to site.

Look, we were considering walking away every single day. and especially at the days when we received their crapy plans or another "will be done next week"... it is not even about the deposit anymore.
We have spent so much our personal time developing the project, finding and fixing their mistakes, preparing itemized lists and mark-ups for them again and again. we have wasted so many good weekends on just staying home and checking every single line on the drawings. I remember a few times sitting there until midnight on Sunday night and just writing emails and explaining everything on markups so they would have everything on Monday morning so we would not waste time...
and a thought that all those efforts were pointless just because some uneducated and unorganized people in Kurmond cannot get their job done just makes me feel worse.
Yesterday the operation manager Matt told me that this is the industry standards...
I just cannot believe that the whole industry consists of this rubbish "specialists".

anyway, hang on in there! you are not alone. just keep pushing them. that's the only thing we can do.

and update us here if something new happens. i think discussing all this here helps a bit.

Yes I agree.. they do start asap.. and the construction team is reasonably pushyy.. they are aiming to finish the job asap!

I would say.. Kurmond Admin/Office team are damn slow n not worthy ... I would give them 2/10.. whereas Kurmonds Construction team is reasonable... I would give them 7/10

Thats NOT true at all instance.. they keep changing this sentence!

During our time, when I asked they didnt gave us this option even we took a day off and went there to sign the final contract as per planned.... and in their meeting room they revealed we cant sign the contract today as they dont have BuildinG insurance due to their internal staffing issue...!

They DIDNT BOTHER TO tell us on phone that "dont come today for this appointment as we are not signing the contract ... " USELESS PEOPLE

Its ALL STORIES... to MISLEAD US!

I know! I remember that you had problems with them signing the contract.
I am just thinking maybe they changed something in the contract? Because now there is nothing which would indicate any deadlines for them. So it can take them any amount of time to provide us with the insurance.

Yes they did that already after I raise this question about contract saying commencement clause listed out this way and bla bla bl.. later on they came back to me that if you want you can sign the contract now while we are waiting for building insurance but in the contract we have add one extra clause!!

hi guys,

nothing is happening here. still waiting for the insurance 3+ weeks as of today.

2 days ago I contacted senior operational manager Matt and he told me that something would come through "tomorrow" which was yesterday.
of course we have not heard from them anything since.

any news at your side?

We got our insurance yesterday. so it has been 1 month from contract signing.
they informed us that they are starting piering next Monday so we are finally moving forward to construction!

Great to hear someone is seeing progress. We were told a month ago they were going to organise our insurance docs (we have not yet seen them), and at some point they emails to say construction is slated to commence on the 28th of May. We have no insurance, no final tender and no contract, so I think we can reliably assume that’s not happening. We were sent a variation doc to sign as they made a mistake with the interior door heights, otherwise we’ve had no other indication that anything is progressing.

It would be easy to assume a company that does this to clients is having financial issues. I wish we’d gone with another company.

I have come back into this forum as HomeOne started to send me reminders of 'new posts' .... I truly couldn't believe what I am reading ... or maybe I can. I was planning to build with this group way back in 2010 ... and the best thing I did was *not* do that ... the pain of their "customer service" staff seems to be back where it was all those years ago! You need to be careful what you write here ... there were legal threats at one stage. All I can say is that you need to carefully check every inch of every bit of the contract, and then check it again ... and then expect this builder to go into 'slow' mode when they can't get you to agree to doing things "there way" ... good luck!

As a matter of interest, we ended up building with Barrington Homes and couldn't be happier on our acreage block :0)

We have been to our site. They have already levelled it. Today they should do the piering.
I will report back later.

Dear All,
We have been in our home 2 and 1/2 years now and it is still absolutely amazing and wonderful!!! To all the newbies out there, you need to have a realistic idea of what building a project home is all about.

We researched for FIVE YEARS, got plans drawn up for extensions, had private builders provide quotes, and researched every home design of every builder of every display home before going ahead with KH.

The best advice I can give is to have patience patience patience.

EVERY builder takes a long time as, don't forget, your home is NOT the only home they are building. It is a complex process and the speed of the build very much depends on the availability of tradespeople (which can be a nightmare), material being delivered on time and the weather.

If you start worrying that the builders haven't been on your site this week then you are in for a big headache. Remember what you are trying to achieve - a professionally built home that you will love forever...and that's exactly hat we got with KH. We made sure our Council did all of the interim checks so we knew everything was built properly, as the Council were the ones signing off on the quality of the construction.

Yes we would all love our homes to be finished in 3 months, but that is not realistic. Don't sweat the small stuff. Only complain when there is something really bad to complain about and then you will get immediate action.

We could not be happier with our home. It was a rollercoaster and very stressful but we know we have a quality build - which after all is what all of us want. GOOD LUCK TO ALL and read my earlier posts for more info

Hi! happy to hear that you love your house!

I would disagree that all builders are the same in their process.
My neighbours already have their kitchen cabinets installed vs we just had piering this Monday done. Our lots were registered on the same day.
I have also seen other neighbours built their homes in 5-6 months.

So Kurmond IS very slow with paperwork. Not only that. They also make the clients stress a lot.
You say we should not complain about small things which I think will make you get totally different result from what you expected. they just keep moving things around the house when you told them not to. And if you don't tell them again and again they will just make you sign something that you don't like.

I am FOR being loyal but at the end I want to get the result I want and not something that their drafter mistakenly drafted.

As far as I can see from my experience, Kurmond is severely understaffed (not enough drafters, not enough consultants), the staff they have are very unprofessional and QA is non-existent. I really hope their tradies are better than admin staff. I really hope that in 3 years I will come to this forum and tell everyone how happy I am with my new house.
As until now I am not happy and stressed with the pre-construction stage.

Anyway, happy Friday everyone!

Here is our Monday piering.
I will make a site visit tomorrow to see the progress.