Issues with Building with Rawson

Hi Guys

Im new to the forums and I have heard a lot about building with Rawson Homes. In fact we went with them due to the great reviews we received on many forums and product review pages. We are building the Eden 29 at the Hermitage in the second release of Gabriel's run. Our process started sour from the start after initially paying the $900.00 start fee and then the $3000.00 to get the plans drawn up we were asked to pay $7000.00 which we were not made aware of until plan consultation.

When I enquired about this $7000 bill at the Gledswood Hills sales office we were greeted with "Oh yeah I forgot to tell you that" which dragged out the process as we were not able to pay the bill until the sale of our house. We have now paid this but were told that we would have to wait a week for a bank cheque to clear ? (Cheques took a week to clear 10 years ago bank cheques take 24-48 hours to clear these days) and then it will take 3 months to have all the materials ordered and plans go through council.

When i offered to pay for a private certifier I was told by Rawson don't bother a private certifier will take 4-6 weeks to get the plans approved and Camden council will take the same time. I think they are telling me ****** here as I know the turn around for a private certifier is maximum 2 weeks....

When I also asked for the estimated costs of the external I was thanked by waiting 4 weeks and me having to hound them for it, so i could get the figures so my bank could have the cash available for their progress payment system so there wouldn't be any delays.

Im on the verge of writing a letter of complaint to management at Rawson Homes as our experience has been somewhat a frustrating and stressful event

Anybody else had these types of issues ?

Cheers

Gabriel

We're building a house, and this is the first time I've ever done so ... but to be honest, the parts of what you describe that I can see are definitely wrong (eg. I know nothing about the certifier vs council thing) don't seem at all unusual for ANY project home builder.

Maybe I'm bitter, but if what you describe is the worst you've encountered, you're actually doing fairly well. And I don't mean that with respect to Rawson, I'm talking about project builders in general.

Can't answer the rest of it but private certifier here in Brisbane took about 8 weeks.

Sorry to hear of your troubles gabsacosta.

On the plus side once you've paid your $7k that is all your going to need until slab is down.

We went through Camden council as well and it took 4 weeks and to be completely honest I was watching their website like a hawk and found that mine was taking about twice as long as everyone else. I probably would've preferred CDC too but given everything else that still has to happen I don't think you are going to be too far behind if at all. I'm sure they vary it for everybuild but our DA went through council and our CC was through a private certifier that only took 3 days.

Have you had your appointments and what design are you building?

We've had issues as well. We were however given the deposit process up front. They had a brochure they handed out at the sales office that gave all the deposits etc.

Was told by sales guy that it would take us 12 months to get the keys to our house from the time we paid our $1200 to get the tender. Its been 12 months now, and we've only just gone to site. I assure you it wasn't us holding the process up. They don't seem to want to do more than one thing at once. Its like they are holding the "file" like a batton and you can't get more than one thing done on the file at a time.

There've been lots and lots of other issues too with regards to costings and delayed or incorrect paperwork. Every request for a costing takes us 4 weeks to get through estimating. I tell everyone I see asking about Rawson to steer clear in my opinion. I feel that signing with Rawson was the worst thing we've done. Better be a damn good house considering the stress its caused me.

Everyone has horror stories with Rawson. Except for me it seems. From what I have seen, I would build with them again. There have been the few little things here and there but nothing that would discourage others.

I'm with you onggie. I found that we had a rocky start with them even up to tender presentation but our PCA has been fantastic at responding to us on the same day, every time. All of our plans have been received ahead of time. Our check plan variations were quoted on the same day, our internal selections prices were back in a week and our kitchen/bathroom drawings from Elba were a few days before (or was it after). The item I was most stressed about was the variation required to comply with council, it had to go to their engineer and I was sweating thinking it was going to add thousands but instead was a credit in excess of $2k.

I don't want to jinx it because our build is only about to start but I've actually been quite impressed with their service and honesty during the admin phase.

Robbie 55- We are building the Eden 29 We have all our appts locked in, for early May, I just cant understand why they are sooo slow. Im a little concerned about the costs as Im unsure if I have any credits at all.

You can check on the process of plan submission on the Camden council website ? I didn't know you could do that

Good choice gabsacosta. We honestly couldn't decide between the eden and metford, in the end it was the width our block that decided for us.

Yes, once your DA has been submitted you can follow the progress on their website. If you need any help with this send me a pm.

Unless you've taken anything out you're unlikely to have any credits. I found most of internals and electrical prices OK (expensive but OK) the tiles are very expensive though if you want 600x600

Are building companies really so poor at estimating? I have patiently waited 3 months for the selections to be priced up. When I finally received them last week they appear to be peppered with glaring errors, some big, some not so big.

I am not sure what other people do when it comes to costs but I cross check every single cost. Not because I don't want builders to make money, quite the contrary, I know they are in business and need to turn a profit.

I do not understand why every decision is dragged out either, I thought it was just my place but unfortunately the more I read the more it appears to be the norm.

BTW I paid my deposit 3 years ago.......

I don't think they're poor at it, so much as they effectively under-staff in the areas that do all that paperworkey-stuff.
I don't know how the economics work out, I guess that the fewer staff they hire, right up to the bleeding-edge of customers not walking, the better-off they are.

Wow that is an extremely long time. We in no way rushed Rawson, in fact we were dragging out the process and it tool us 10months to start building. Besides your quotes taking forever to come back what has been the major hold up.

I am under the impression that besides Rawson taking some time to get back to you, the only real hold up for us during the colours appointment was the cabinet makers getting back to Rawson about the cost for our kitchen variations.

Unfortunately you aren't the only person building a house, it's a case of take a number and join the queue.
They probably have about 100 other people wanting their house built now and trying to get their paperwork sorted.

I can't complain about Rawsons customer service and build time and quality, as our home is fantastic.
I am just glad our maintenance is finally over!!!

Rawson homes...

How do i start this. let me first say that they have nice houses. their sales person who i dealt with at Homeworld kellyville was good.
It all started last year April. We first had a look at Rawson homes home and land packages in kellyville next to homeworld. When we asked if we can modify the houses, the sales guy said it is very limited due to home and land packages. But if we build one of their homes in a block "other than home and land package" we can pretty much change the layouts the way we want and that is their main business. So we bought a land in North Kellyville and set our heart on "Seaview 39".
Paid the initial deposit, Sales guy said "yes" to all changes we said we wanted.
Come Tender Presentation, I specifically asked the moron who is apparently an estimator team leader or some one if we could change the internal walls as we wanted. he said, you can change them later but get the tender accepted first.
accepted the tender and there goes another $3000 of our money. by now, Rawson have $4000 of our money.

The fun began when i we did the walkthrough of the plans with another guy at Rawson office. Suddenly Rawson now says they can't make the changes we want as they are a project builder. So they decided to say that after taking $4000 of my money????

To add to that the guy who did the walkthrough of the plans was rude, its true the meeting went past 2.5 hours, but there is no reason for him to tell me that "I should be finished work by now". So unprofessional. It is not a simple investement we make when we build a house. and not that we are asking Rawson to build us a house for free. so as customers we accept a level of commitment from the people we deal with. If they are understaffed, we don't care, its rawson's responsibility to get more staff.

I was so dissapointed. If this is the level of service we are getting even before the built, how will it be once the built started.
I asked for my money back and said i don't want to proceed.
Well as accepted, they pulled their terms and conditions lines that they won't refund any money.

Anyway i let go of my $4000 and decided to go with Metricon. Found a better house that suits us and level of communication is so far good. much better than Rawson.

Rawson certainly have nice houses and i still love their interior designer's work, but there are certainly much better builders in the market.
was a waste of my time and money dealing with them.

Thanks

Hi Gabriel

We too are building with Rawson in the second release of gabriels run, we are lot 835!! Our process has been very thorough and quite a good experience. We have received price variations very quickly and plans were always ready prior to the estimated time. Our PCA is Kellie who i have found to be very responsive to our needs. We have just lodged our DA with council so will see how long that takes! Is yours in council yet?

Sorry to hear that you have been mucked around.

Karyn

This is a bit of concern for us as we are waiting for the tender to be presented soon. We will definitely need to make some changes of the internal walls. As I understand from their website, they claimed to flexible and willing to do changes, called it something like "Flex Appeal".

Can I ask what type of changes you wanted to make? is it complex structural or simple changes?

Karyn we are lot 840.

We are not making any real structural changes to the house, first we didn't want to go with carpet on the inside of the house so we asked for a rebate on that. It took them 3 months to get back to me and when i was quoted the figure, I fell off my chair of how low it was compared to other builders. I asked them how did you get to that figure ? We cannot tell you that.... huh ? That's the estimating team they work that out. We are a project builder and we can get it at a rock bottom price. So i just have to accept it is what it is ok...

I've now had the wet area tile selection and of course we have added features. I've asked for an invoice to pay the excess charges through our tiler as I dont want to add this to our home loan and again I've waited 4 weeks for an invoice. I have no idea how their internal departments work but in my line of work if i had a client waiting for 4 weeks with no response and everyone avoiding me I would be sacked.

We also had issues with the toilets we didn't like the toilets at internal selection so we were asked to make a choice at tradelink and give them the item number and off we go. So when I asked them for a credit for not using a standard issue toilet and paying the difference of using a tradelink toilet. Oh No sir you have to pay the RRP for your toilet plus 20% margin. So your telling me you dont get a discount as a builder ?. If I go to tradelink as a consumer and I say how much for two items Ive walked away with at least $20.00 off the price.

I hope that once we start the building process it gets better. As far as their pre administration team it has been a "Very" disappointing journey. So much so that Ive wondered if a formal letter of complaint to the management team would be appropriate .

We looked at that block. You are just up from us!!

What a shame u have had such a bad experience. Might see you around while we stalk our blocks. Ha ha.

I'm thinking a complaint letter might help them to get their acts together.

hahaha we might just bump into each other, have you been given a start date ? We were told late June early July...

The latest is now I have finally have my tiling invoice but I cant pay separately until they put the slab down as its apart of slab payment? OK this is news to us we were told this would be ok. One person says one thing another person contradicts the other.
Who is running this show? Its a comedy of errors and at the end of it all im getting is a bitter taste in my mouth.

All variations must be paid at the first progress payment. Thats what we were always told and that's what happened.