My wife and I are building a house at the moment, as are her sister and husband. In actual fact, neither of us have actually started building... but anyway.
They started doing all their research for their house about this time last year, and I think they chose their block and builder (both through m3tricon) in about october last year, all signed and sealed. At the time they were told that the land would title in February. So with their build date shortly after that, they expected they'd be well and truly in by Christmas this year. These guys are great planners and have a real knack for colour selection and materials etc. They have loved every minute of the whole process, and they are absolutely in love with their house (i forget what it is called, but it is beautiful!).
My wife and I were house sitting for my parents while they were working overseas. We own our own little apartment, and when my parents came back in November, we had to move into our teeny little place. We pretty much decided straight away that we couldn't stay here, not just because it was small, but because we want to start a family soon, and this place just isn't suitable. Don't tell anyone, but we'd actually planned to start a family earlier this year, but when we moved in here it meant we had to delay until we have a house! So with the pressure on to get out of here ASAP we started looking at buying an existing property but by mid January decided to build instead. We couldn't have a family in this apartment, and so we just wanted something built and built quickly. It really is something of a Miracle that we were able to find land that was available pretty much straight away, and a builder that was ready to build as soon as we had our land.
By mid feb we'd chosen our block (at Manhattan Place) and selected our builder and house (Urbanedge's Larne). Fast forward to today, our land has titled, contracts are all done, and they've started doing groundwork on our block. With a pinch of luck we'll be done in October/November....10 months after we started looking. Quick, by anyone's standard!
The hard part for us is that their block has been delayed and delayed and delayed, and now they've been told that the land won't be titled till August! I won't even go into all the other issues they've had with contract stuff ups, floor plans full of errors, and generally poor customer service from what I can tell. We both feel absolutely terrible because whilst we're going full steam ahead, they keep getting stalled and stalled and stalled. For us, our house is a neccisity, we can't raise a family in this apartment, so in only a couple of weeks we'd just gone out and bought a house and some land. For them, their house is their dream home, the culmination of a year's worth of research and hard work.
It seems so unfair that they seem to be just getting royaly screwed over by M3tricon. I mean, they've basically been * to..over and over and over. And yet, here we are not even caring what colour tiles we have (we've basically picked everything "as displayed"), and we're all going along swimingly. It is particularly hard for us because we want to get excited about our own build and say "hey guys they've started work on our block", but when you hear how much stuffing around they're being put through.... it makes you want to keep it all to yourself. We absolutely love these guys, and it kills us to see them getting screwed around so much. The worst part of it is, we started the process some 8 months after them, and will likely be in our new house 8 months before them. It is enough to make us want to ring Urbanedge and say, "please don't build our house yet!"