METRICON v WISDOM - admin process

I have read a lot of posts mentioning how slow and sometimes inept WISDOMS admin process is despite them building apparently great homes and everything usually going smoothly once they finall start building, but I have not read anything about METRICON.

How is everyone's experience with METRICON from the time they accept Tender to the point that they start building?

I ask as we are close to deciding on who to build our new home and it is between METRICON (Orlando 28) & WISDOM (Esperence 26) and we are taking all factors into consideration.

Thanks for your input

Hi Ukaussi

Where are you building? We are building the Hudson in Sydney and I can tell you the admin process is long, frustrating and has definitely tested our patience! We paid initial deposit back in April and we are currently at the final stage waiting for DA to be approved. We've had varying degree of positive/negative experience dealing with their staff. I think no matter who you end up building with, the bottom line is the more proactive you are with your build the better the experience. Good luck!

We are building in NW Sydney on vacant land so no KDR

I think it depends on how you approach the build. If you didn't need to make any structural changes and stuck with standard selections then I'm sure that the Wisdom process wouldn't be too bad (assuming you did your part and acted on things swiftly).

But, if you need to change some things or want to add in non-standard items then even simple things like different tapware or additional insulation needs to be costed and that's what seems to take time with Wisdom.

We took 12 months from signing the tender to construction starting with Wisdom but then again, we did make some fairly extensive changes (we nearly doubled the stock price!).

I have quoted what you said there, Matt, and changed it to match our "unique" circumstance (which is EXACTLY the same as yours).

I think the answer is expectation. Get a few people on this forum building with any project builder, and you're going to get people complaining about the admin process & making it look like that particular builder is worse than all the others.

There are probably exceptions; but I suspect you'd need to go small & custom (which means they're concentrating solely on you) before it's any different. Volume builders make their money by having a smooth pipeline, and having a fast-but-expensive procedure for dealing with "blockages' isn't generally going to do much for them financially.

i concur with Matt1 and Forg's comments ...

If you don't change a single thing and build something that is stock standard paperwork should be straight forward.

Then come council and the different stages before the builder can start on site ...

My thoughts on this is that every (volume) builder will be the same, it may be painful at different stages of the admin process. They all have the strengths and weaknesses, not one of them will be perfect. If you think about a long bank queue this is quite the same. Each prospective customer has a file and is in line to be looked at by some specialist, when there's an issue they inform you but put you in the bottom of another pile while they go through the next client. By the time you've responded they may be going through their emails one by one "searching for each client's response" and then address it.

So .... the "delays" keep popping its ugly head ... it is quite frustrating but it is what it is ... unless they charge even more than what they do now and set up a call center to answer calls for the rest of us.

We paid a deposit with M & were very disappointed.

We were not happy with the sales consultant & when we had our tender presentation the amount was very different to the amount that we had initially been quoted. We also were very up front with things that we wanted to retain on our property KDR & had been told that this wouldn't be a problem then at the presentation were told that there was no way we could have what we wanted. The display home we had been through had been extensively increased in size & we had not been advised of this ( it was no longer on display when we were looking to proceed & it wasn't till we got our plans - after the deposit & asked for the plans from the old display that WE worked out that they had changed nearly all the rooms). A couple of other things happened & we thought we would cut our losses & walk away.

We started to look again & are building a similar sort of home with wisdom. So far so good. It is still slow - we signed in June & are waiting for the contract but our tender wasn't much different to the estimate & the sales consulatants were refreshingly up front & honest about everything.

I am sure that we will probably get frustrated at some point with Wisdom, & most of the reputable volume builders I imagine aren't much different. It's who you feel you will be most comfortable with.

We haven't had the best experience with M. We got to contract presentation eventually but had lots of trouble with the administration process and lack of attention to detail. It got that bad that we ended up pulling out with M and are now going through a local builder, in the end the price is actually cheaper because their standard inclusions are much higher. M put a lot of extra costs on (make sure you read your contract VERY carefully because a number of larger costs had been put in that were not necessary). However there are quite a few happy M customers on here too and I think that if you go with a volume builder you have to go in expecting that there will be a few problems along the way, we were expecting that and were very patient. I think the difference between the local builder and the volume builder is also that who you talk to does the work, they know what you want and it doesn't just get handed on to someone else who has never met you and doesn't talk to you or care what instructions you have given. The local builder also handles things much better when there is a problem in our experience.

I think in the end every build will have a few ups and downs along the way, go in expecting that. For us we weren't happy with poor customer service and lack of attention to detail, the process just went on and on due to repetitive errors. We are much happier now and feel far more comfortable with our current builder, I think that you need to go with your gut feeling of who you think you can trust and who you feel more comfortable talking to because you will be doing a LOT of talking and will have to discuss problems along the way.

sorry, forgot to mention that we have built 4 new homes in the past 13 years but all were in the USA and were all essentially what you refer to here as "House & Land Package" although even more limited as they even had the facade and colour scheme predetermined and locked in per community guidelines.

So basically it was all about cost of upgrades as everything else fixed.

Not too many screw ups because mostly a standard house plan I guess

It feels massively unpatriotic to say it ... but I'd suggest the process of getting a house built here is way crappier than in the USA. The patriot in me wants me to say that it's probably because everyone involved here is on a fair wage & the entire industry doesn't revolve around exploitation, and by the time you involve a hundred people all getting a fair wage the cost of something increases massively. The cynic in me, however, wants to say that after watching the process the amount of wastage appears massive (both in terms of materials & people's time), and maybe in the USA where human life is worth so little the wastage doesn't add as much cost? Plus the customer is always right there; here the customer's got no idea what's going on & that gets in the way of doing it properly.

I can totally relate. We paid a deposit with M and pulled out.

We never built a house before so everything is new to us. You'd trust these people you talk to but realise in the end they are just after your money! We experienced surprise fees and unbelievable mark up on upgrades. If you are working on a budget, you'd be sorry - totally disadvantaged. Glad we decided to back out; lost the deposit but in the end we are found a local builder (through referral) that could help us do so much more with the same amount of money.

Do not rush things and always do your research!