Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Oct 29, 2014 12:43 pm My partner and I have our tender presentation tomorrow with Rawson Homes. We've had a most, if not all of our intended upgrades and house plan amendments made during the our consultation with the sales person, so he's incorporated all the changes into the tender presentation. We should have a fairly decent estimate of costs. The sales person has advised us that if we accept the tender on the day, the $5k Envy Package will be included in the tender at no cost. I'm assuming if we don't accept and sign on the day, we'll have to pay $5k for the package. My question is, would it be silly to accept the tender on the day if it all looks ok? Or should we take it home, miss out on the $5k package and take our time to review? What other types of things should we be looking out for? Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 2Oct 29, 2014 1:19 pm You want to be completely sure that they will do everything you want. The difference between what a project builder will do & what a reasonable customer expects they will do is often pretty big; don't assume ANYTHING can be done which isn't explicitly stated in the tender. Additionally, their policy on what can or can't be done may change during the admin process, so you have to be 100% sure that anything you're going to want done is in the tender, regardless of whether the salesperson tells you it's a no-brainer & not worth including (and that's not because they're trying to scam you or anything - stuff just gets changed). Unless it's in the tender, they may simply refuse to do whatever-it-is when the time comes to finalise the contract or make an options/colours/interiors decision. IMHO if you're 100% sure, get the $5k freebie. If you're not 100% sure, $5k is nothing compared to the cost of a house! Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 3Oct 29, 2014 2:06 pm Making Assumptions this early in the game will leave you dissapointed often when dealing with a builder. Dont Assume anything, everthing in writing etc. Its a strong arm tactic to make you uncomfortable and sign without checking everything properly , and no sales person wants to give anyone more time to change their minds or compare against any other quotes/ tenders from competitors. Id bet obscene sums of cash they will offer the deal with the $5K package if you were to say, No we will be taking this with us today and doing some further research, consulting a lawyer, or whatever you choose to say, If we decide to go with you and sign, the 5ooo clams offer is still included right, the answer will be yes. Enjoy Timeline Aug 08-Land Mar 09-Demo/Titles Sept 10-Handover No1 Sept 11-Handover No2 April 12-Sold No2 Aug 14-Land/Demo Jan 15-Slabs viewtopic.php?f=31&t=25736 Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 4Oct 29, 2014 2:57 pm Thanks Forg!! Our sales person has been more than helpful with making amendments to the plan and including extra's which we wanted to included in the tender. We'll make sure tomorrow that any changes and addtitions discussed at our initial consulation have been included in the tender price. Echo: That was my thought exactly. Cheers. Outside of the changes we've already requested to be included in the tender, are there typically any major things to look out for that should be included? Thanks for your help!! Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 5Oct 30, 2014 7:53 am Hi Iverson, Good luck on your tender presentation. We are also looking to build with Rawson, our sales person is currently drawing up our plan for the changes we requested. Our sales person also mentioned the same deal if we willing to sign the tender on the presentation day. Very interested to see if we can get the same deal if we sign a few day after the presentation after we digest all the information. Our McDonald Jones Cordova Two Build - http://cordovatwomjh.blogspot.com.au Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 6Oct 30, 2014 8:12 am Sounds like the car bloke who offers a special on the day ... I hate that. Agree with others - it'll probably still be there - AND (regardless) you must be sure you've got it right ! Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 7Oct 30, 2014 8:41 am My only gut-feel problem with taking it home & not taking the deal is that I don't know if we'd have discovered any of the surprises we discovered in taking it home to mull-over. It's only when you've done your research, you find that Caesarstone comes in 32 colours which all cost the same, and you get to making selections, that you discover you are only allowed to choose from 2 colours & they won't install anything else. Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 8Oct 30, 2014 8:48 am Forg My only gut-feel problem with taking it home & not taking the deal is that I don't know if we'd have discovered any of the surprises we discovered in taking it home to mull-over. It's only when you've done your research, you find that Caesarstone comes in 32 colours which all cost the same, and you get to making selections, that you discover you are only allowed to choose from 2 colours & they won't install anything else. I don't get how that affects the tender though. Wouldn't that just count as a variation you made at color selection? Our McDonald Jones Cordova Two Build - http://cordovatwomjh.blogspot.com.au Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 9Oct 30, 2014 9:08 am I hate high pressure sales tactics. When we went through in April 2013 (and yes, I still don't have my house) I told the tender guy that there was no way we would sign on the day. And we didn't. It gave me and Mr Brown Bear a chance to talk and look through it by iurselves. We had multiple tenders, had gone through Alkira as well, who ended up too expensive and wouldn't negotiate despite the sales guy saying they would. I think what others are saying is that the tender price isn't a good indicator of the final price. We ended up around $60-70k over the tender price in the end. Plus they took so long in admin its costed me another $40k in rent I hadn't budgeted for. Now we are way more committed with the home loan than I wanted. If you aren't fussy, don't care about tiles or electrical, or having your choice of anything, then the tender price should be reasonable. Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 10Oct 30, 2014 9:35 am Jazz926 Forg My only gut-feel problem with taking it home & not taking the deal is that I don't know if we'd have discovered any of the surprises we discovered in taking it home to mull-over. It's only when you've done your research, you find that Caesarstone comes in 32 colours which all cost the same, and you get to making selections, that you discover you are only allowed to choose from 2 colours & they won't install anything else. I don't get how that affects the tender though. Wouldn't that just count as a variation you made at color selection? That's sort-of my point, I don't think these sorts of things are an issue because they're not usually in the tender & the potential problem won't occur to you when you're signing the tender anyway. HOWEVER, we definitely saw cases (one with Rawson ) where something was possible at tender time, and because the builder became over-busy they made the decision that it wasn't possible by contract time. My Caesarstone example is not what we observed, but I'm going to take mine further ... say the black & the white & the blue Caesarstone was available at tender-time, but by contract-time say the blue had been removed as a selection. You want blue. Because there's no cost difference, you probably wouldn't consider putting something like that in the tender. However, if you HAD, you'd find they'd honour the tender when it came to contract time. Well, Alkira Homes did. I can't remember what it was, but there was something in our build which they said they wouldn't have agreed-to if it hadn't been in the tender. Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 11Oct 30, 2014 11:35 am I'd be taking it home, there is no way you can explore it fully with them looking over your shoulder and waiting. We found SO MANY things when we went home and did our research, some costing a lot! Our Blog: http://werelivingthedream2.tumblr.com Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 12Oct 30, 2014 1:41 pm We decided to take it home. I feel its ridiculous to expect someone to sign something on the day with out going over it carefully considering the money involved. We were initially advised the Envy package would not be included if we didn't sign on the day... then I told them that's something we need to consider when deciding between your tender and the 2 others we've shortlisted. In the end i think they'll include it at no cost, however if they don't i still much prefer to have taken the tender home, reviewed and if satisfied, then signed. I also love the "I'm not a sales man" comments, followed by repeating at least 10 times in 1 hour "when you sign today, pay the acceptance fee and we get this process moving..." Ha, at least 6-8 times that I recall. Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 13Nov 01, 2014 9:08 pm For anyone that was interested, we did take the tender home and ened up accepting it today and still had the envy package included at no cost. Rawson were super helpful in the end, more so the original sales man Paul. Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 14Nov 02, 2014 9:39 am Id never sign on the day. It took me two weeks to send it back and there were many changes and questions (different builder). We too thought we had everything in there but 3 variations later were only just satisfied now lol Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 15May 28, 2015 5:08 pm Mrs Brown Bear I think what others are saying is that the tender price isn't a good indicator of the final price. We ended up around $60-70k over the tender price in the end. Plus they took so long in admin its costed me another $40k in rent I hadn't budgeted for. Now we are way more committed with the home loan than I wanted. @Mrs Brown Bear we've just received our tender from rawsons yesterday and it's come in literally just under our budget/ finance amount. I know I'll probably choose upgrades in the colour selections so we will be taking some unnecessary things out of the tender to have a bit of a buffer. I'll also be requesting a pre-selection appt to check out their standard range before accepting the quote. Just curious what made up the $60-70k on top of the tender price for you? (If you don't mind sharing) Re: Accepting the tender on the day or taking home to review 16May 28, 2015 7:35 pm This tender process is confusing to me. I'm sure someone else had a similar situation, where they were offered a bonus to sign on the day, but didn't and were still able to get the bonus. I had Metricon offer me a dishwasher if I signed on 30th of June. And I had Burbank offer to chuck in $1,500 of "vouchers" if I signed that day. The sales person made it seem as if he was doing me a HUGE favour. A week later the package they told me was ending.. did end, but a new one came out that would have saved me an additional 5k!! I didn't go with them. I'm going with a small builder, by the time I finally sign the contract I will have a fixed price contract with every upgrade, all my plans reviewed piece by piece, picked all my tiles, colours, etc and had my plan preapproved by my design panel and my finance unconditionally approved by the bank. I couldn't imagine signing before all that had happened. 4 1707 The fastest thing a builder will do is bank your cheque, those systems work perfectly with lightning speed, everything else is slow burn. Just the way it is. 1 5607 Can someone please offer some advice? Im DESPERATE. Because I'm completely and utterly exhausted. How long are variations taking with other companies at the moment? We… 0 11919 |