Latitude 37 vs Comdain

LFMEL · Jun 16, 2020 11:13 pm

I am recently looking for a luxury custom builder, went to latitude 37 display homes as well as comdain's, both looks good. But of course won't know the quality behind the surface.

L37 they seems have quite a lot good reviews on product review, but also has some very bad reviews, this makes me a bit hesitate, understand could have good or not good reviews, but so bad reviews from not only one person seems ur... shouldn't the quality be consistence?

Comdain not really find many reviews so far...but saw one or two posts, looks good.

Any suggestions on this two? or other good quality custom builders?

LFMEL · Jun 19, 2020 6:37 pm

Anyone has experience on either L37 or Comdain?

pencilhead · Aug 08, 2020 11:44 am

Bit late coming to this thread, but for those who may be considering.
We are a week away from final inspection.
Latitude 37 have been awesome.
You hear about the horror stories and how difficult and stressful it is building and to have issues rectified etc.
We have had none of that with our build.

L37 are custom builder at the pricier end of the market. But you do get what you pay for. Their tradies are experienced and very good. We had some initial issues negotiating engineering designs, but once those were sorted there have been no major issues.
The main thing going for them is their quality control. They have an independent inspector for each of the stages as well as their own people. There were markings from 3 different people checking framing was plumb and true.

I regularly inspected the build and anything I found was rectified or explained without question, changes were also accommodated.
For example, I asked to have a wall moved after it had been framed to make WIR bigger, this was done without question or being charged for it.

Hope this helps someone when making their decisions

LFMEL · Aug 11, 2020 10:52 am

pencilhead

Bit late coming to this thread, but for those who may be considering.
We are a week away from final inspection.
Latitude 37 have been awesome.
You hear about the horror stories and how difficult and stressful it is building and to have issues rectified etc.
We have had none of that with our build.

L37 are custom builder at the pricier end of the market. But you do get what you pay for. Their tradies are experienced and very good. We had some initial issues negotiating engineering designs, but once those were sorted there have been no major issues.
The main thing going for them is their quality control. They have an independent inspector for each of the stages as well as their own people. There were markings from 3 different people checking framing was plumb and true.

I regularly inspected the build and anything I found was rectified or explained without question, changes were also accommodated.
For example, I asked to have a wall moved after it had been framed to make WIR bigger, this was done without question or being charged for it.

Hope this helps someone when making their decisions

Thank you pencilhead for sharing your experience. I am happy with their process and conceptual design, also their response is pretty quick and good. However their initial quote was way too high...just can't believe compares to our neighbor they used L37 1 year ago, really not sure is now they have raised their price within one year that much?...

I PMed you a message on the price rate.

B3L · Jan 08, 2021 1:05 pm

We went through a similar journey over last couple of years, assessing 5 or 6 builders and narrowed it down to Carter Grange, L37 or Comdain. Chose Comdain because we ‘connected’ better with the team. Both L37 and Comdain are great, consistent quality and true custom builders. We got a little disappointed with the arrogance from Chris, the designer, at L37 during the initial design process and felt he didn’t want our business and so chose Comdain.

kirashogun · Jan 12, 2021 4:31 pm

Chose Comdain. I also found L37 a bit arrogant and their inclusions seems really bad compared to the price they charge. Comdain seems expensive at the start but they only use quality materials.

Behind the surface, Comdain is a cut above your typical major builder. They use support grade thick frames around all doors including internal ones. Ceiling batons for larger rooms to ensure perfect flat ceilings, the paint job was near perfect. The inspector from Darbecca said it's the best paint job he has ever seen. Even the door hinges are Gainsborough architectural range all standard.

L37 despite them saying they are "luxury" still uses waffle pod slab. That by itself wear me off these guys. Comdain won't go anywhere near that stuff. A lot Comdain staff are all ex-Englehart Homes so they know luxury.

serene_bleu · Sep 09, 2021 4:31 pm

We built with Latitude 37. Handover in 2017 and we frankly missed the boat. I think if you used them around 2010-2015 they were great, but were in decline when we used them. Our build was impacted by high staff turnover (3x construction managers) and for all their talk of quality we didn't get it. Especially not with the paint finishes!

After build service has also been pretty awful. We had significant water damage from an incorrectly installed gutter which their handyman advised us was a cracked roof tile so we ended up have to do two insurance claims for an issue we thought was fixed. Now it's like they're ghosting us on other maintenance issues (some of this experience is again due to staff turnover)... overall, not worth the time or effort to claim under warranty.

The comment above about the designer Chris brings back memories, the only one more arrogant than him was his partner who was the senior designer! We got our final house design through council without having to go to VCAT with zero help from them.

Any good has been thoroughly outweighed by the bad.