Building Newport 19 with Coral Homes in Saddlers Ridge

First i would like to say Hi to everyone on here.

My partner and I have started the building process through Coral Homes in the Saddlers Ridge Estate near Maitland.

We started with a house and land package and have had the land exchanged and waited 3 weeks for the first contract to be drawn up. Unfortunately we are still waiting for the contract and are a little bit annoyed on how long it is taking. It shouldn't be that hard to draw up a contract on a plan that does not have really any changes to it

After a few hiccups from the soliciters not telling us anything and not explaining the steps of purchasing a house as we are first home buyers, to the sales consultant going on holidays and not even having a away from office email response for over 2 weeks.

Though we are going to head to the HIA Sydney Home Show tomorrow, which I am excited to attend and see all the great ideas that we could implement in our home.

This is our plan of the Newport 19.


We quite like the area outside of Newcastle and liked the display homes out at Chisolm that Coral Homes has out there. The inclusions are pretty good as well as the package includes the Designer package. Also stage 7 of Saddlers Ridge has fibre installed from the NBN!!

Sorry to hear your experiencing Corals lack of considering people have time expectations. From when we signed to job start took soo long but I must say they have made up on time pretty quickly. We have a roof as of today and I couldn't be happier. With Coral it seems patience pays off. Good luck with your build, I hope you enjoy the process as much as we have.

Hi Jenm,

yeah after reading a few posts it seems their head office can be a bit slow but once the land is prepared for building then it flies along.

I'm a bit confused though because i have read that people have tendor meetings and then sign the contract. i don't believe we have had a tendor meeting and coral are currently supposed to have a contract for us to sign hopefully on Monday. What happens in the tendor stage? also sorry to ask so many questions, but have you had the electrical and tiling appointments yet?

we are building in the Maitland area council so the council approval should be fairly quick and its in an estate with all the stages up to 7 basically already built so it shouldn't be that slow to get approval

Hope your build is going well so far!

Ok i'll do my best to answer. We had a few tender meetings to ensure we had everything set for the contract. Then the contract was received after ages, we signed paid deposit, 2 weeks passed then we got meetings, tiles, colour, electrical. I work full time so as we were pretty certain what tiles we wanted I took an afternoon off work to finish the colour appointment. Then after that we locked our tile selection in on a Saturday.
The hardest for us was electrical as that involved back and forth e-mails over couple of weeks, however, I still got it all sorted and our build started 5/6 weeks after that.
Hope I helped a little.

Oh ok, thanks for explaining

Well it sounds like we have had a tendor meeting and now just waiting on the contract to be delivered. We only wanted to add a few things to the original plan like adding cavity doors, change to gas appliances, adding data cabling and tv points and adding plumbing for a future fridge with water dispenser.

If i could ask what inclusions/deals you received for your house? and maybe what you added or removed and wanted to complete post build?

We are having the Designer package with our build which hopefully means we like the inclusions without having to pay to upgrade.

Also if anyone else knows if the builder has the NBN connection preinstalled before you move in?

Yay!!!! looks like we should have our contract available on the 26th of this month!!

Hope it stays around the estimated price.

A question for first home buyers, did you have to pay duty tax on the house and land because we thought there is no tax as the land is vacant and bought for the purpose to build a first home on.

Hi,
Ummm what we received, changed, everything haha no probably not but seems so much.
We got the designer package so was fine.
Saved thousands by no alfresco, saved quiete a few more thousand by making garage a bit bigger and sticking laundry in there.
Upgrades-carpet bronze was hard so changed to silver range, handles-wasnt much and makes opening closing cupboards easier, internal doors-not much and I reallly wanted a design on them, 2 changed to sliders also. The Kitchen-changed it flipped it added to it, rotated it then added a high bar on side of it. Changed cooktop and water to gas bottles so bills will be less.

Biggest add on $8500 retaining wall. Can't be helped, looks great and is perfect spot for my veggies and herbs.
If I wasn't on such a tight budget I may have splurged on alfresco but we really can do without for now. One aircon, will get another when I save up for it. I may have played with my kitchen more but again, I do need money for furniture so yes we may not have the biggest most functional for entertaining house but it's spacious and those things will come. For now though with such little upgrades/ inclusions we love our house.
I hope your having a great time with all the decisions.

Hey Jen, do you remember how much your carpet upgrade was?

After months of umming and ahhing and researching away - it's looking like we'll be paying our deposit this week before the next price rise That means it's finally going to start happening!

We're looking at going with the Indulgence and the promo at the moment includes ducted for a couple of thousand. We're getting the alfresco included too. This is going to be our forever house and the alfresco is a necessity for us with three young boys.

I feel slightly faint

Can't help you with the first home buyers, that was a while ago for us and I'm pretty sure things have changed.

The 26th? That's in only a couple of days!!! Can you keep us updated as to how much the contract price difers from the estimate? I'll be interested to see what extras are tacked on - hopefully few or none!

Hi, Carpet upgrade was around a thousand so worth it as the standard isn't that nice especially for a very young family we want to keep things as soft as possible. We just couldn't afford an alfresco but in time a bbq area/ undercover patio may come and we see it as will probably be there 50 yrs or a home to keep in the family we will adf as we go but would definitly be beautiful if you can afford one straight away.

Our contract price was a little less than the tender so there is hope for all.
Yayy!! for 2 days, good luck.

Hi Mellywil, that's ok and we definitely can keep you updated. I really can't wait for Thursday. I am going to be refreshing my email inbox constantly haha

I'll give a run down of what we added and price and all that

Does any body know what the approval time from the council is like? I was told it shouldn't take that much as maitland council like to push developments and the estate has had a fair amount of approvals already?

Oh we went and saw Beaumont tiles just to have a look and noticed the tiles that look like wooden floor boards. Anyone used them and love them or ran into problems?

Hi Jenm, what supplier does Coral use for their carpets? Thanks hopefully the contract is what we hope for.

Hi, I think it was carpetcall but at your colour appointment they go through that with you.
Hope you got your contract through today ok.

The plans look great.

Thanks Janm, we have been trying to source who they use so we can go have a look and then try to make some decisions so we don't umm and err in the appointments.

Unfortunately we did not receive an email with the contract like our consultant said we would and that our consultant should have the contract tomorrow. i hope i can go pick them up while my partner is at work. It better be ready for us to go over because its been 4 weeks.

Thanks Shambini, we took one look at this plan and loved it as it had everything where we wanted it for our price range. My partner and I currently have a house mate we will take with us so the fourth bedroom is our study.

Hi, yes I understand. We went everywhere, looked at everything we could. Must of went to 3 carpetcalls but they each didn't know about exactly the carpets as they said the included ranges change every few months for different builders. The rest is straight forward and hint taps/handles same brands can be found at bunnings. Kitchen cesaerstne and laminate choices can be at masters or as we found out, beaumonts has samples.
Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Yeah I think out of my partner and I, I am the one who is excited about all the colours and inclusions. I even asked as a birthday present last month that we could go to Beaumont Tiles to just have a look at the range from Coral HaHa.

I hope we are able to see the contract today so it can add to my excitement for the day as i just received very good grades for my first year of uni after 10 years in retail I think i have convinced my partner to head to a masters (we have never been to one and would like to see the difference to a bunnings) and hopefully we can also head out to the block of land as we have not been out to it in over a week

I just hope that our range at CarpetCall is a nice one as I've been in a few rental places with fairly boring and cheap carpet. Nothing like being able to lay down on the floor in comfort

We are not sure on our colour selections atm, so not sure what colour the cesaerstone should be. we were thinking of dark cupboard finish and a dark splashback with maybe a light coloured bench top.




Also we were thinking of using the wooden floor like tiles as its pets friendly and less maintenance then true wooden floor boards, but just not entirely sure that's what we want and also if it will go out of fashion and lower the resell value.

Well we received a tendor last friday to have a look and they included pretty much what we asked for and the majority of it will cost less then what the sales consultant quoted for the changes

We included some cavity slider doors to seperate bedroom 4 from the house and allow it to be part of our private space and the other near the entry hall way. Mostly for privacy but also to help with cooling and heating costs.

There were a few charges that we were not sure on why it was included. Things like charges to have services connected as it was stated that there would be an allowance in the house and land price. But there was an additional charge because the cost for underground services was more then the allowance. No need for any retaining walls thank god! The only thing they seemed to have got wrong was that we requested an extra 13 data points and they only included an extra 5.....not too sure but that is quite a bit of a difference to what was requested haha.

Though there were a few happy surprises like on the plans it shows that all bathroom vanities will actually have 20mm cesaerstone which I asked about after we signed the plans to the sales consultant and she mentioned that they should not be included because that option was in a higher package being offered

We have researched a few ideas about tile colour and materials that we want to include in the house






We are both liking a dark brown/dark colour for the cupboards with a light colour for the bench tops and even though I like the bright colour for the splash back my partner wants a dark splash back


A few extras that we are glad we included was the extra shower head in the en-suite shower.




Luckily the picture on the house and land pamphlet has the type of colours we liked except the garage door was a dark chocolate colour then the white that's pictured. I am hoping that we will get the 1200mm wide door stained in a nice dark stain as well.

Not too sure about getting the grout colour different to whats in the dark brick picture or to leave it as it is.

Very cool cubshome, it must be so exciting seeing the plans for your house come together.

Are you getting the Inspirations package? Or the Designer?

Can you remember the charge for additional data or electrical ports per port?

We like the dark colours for the house too, but I'm starting to get concerned about how hot it would make the house. I'm thinking dark colours wouldn't be very green with the heat they contain, but I don't know if I like anything else

What's the standard grout colour?

Hi Mellywil,

yeah i'm very excited to see all the details on how the house is going to be constructed.

We have the designer package as there are a few inclusions that we don't seem to have the need for from the inspirations package. The designer has tiling and carpets, driveway, letter box, 'b' grade turf to the front and some pretty nice range of available finishes.

Yeah we had thought about the heat as well but we are having insulation basically in every wall and roof cavity and we advised during the tendor that we liked the darker colours so the builder can make sure everything works with the Basix requirements. Also where we are building it doesn't get that hot but quite cold so i think we should be fine. i mean i definitely wouldn't have dark colours on a house in north Queensland where I am originally from.

My partner and I are very fond of dark chocolate colours and the like very earthy tones but of course you also have to make sure you have some highlights with the darker colours.

One thing we might not be able to do is use the wood like grained tiles as they require more labor to lay them and its about i think roughly $44 per m2 extra. Might have to go to Beaumont tiles and decide again

They quoted us on an additional 5 data points totaling $728 and they included in the house and land package nbn package #2 that includes the fiber lead in, a hills home hub, 1 data point and one phone point. We originally wanted 13 additional data points so it will be interesting to see how much they will charge us for our original amount.

Also we haven't attended the electrical appointment yet so i can't tell you a price for additional power points sorry but i can update everyone when we do.

All the information we have on mortar colour is that it says natural colour with rolled/ironed joints. We are having the tile meeting on the 18th so hopefully some more information after then.