Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 27, 2017 5:14 pm Hey all! So I am super excited and overwhelmed all in one.. We are first home buyers and builders but have a bit of knowledge up our sleeve so are still at early stages of our process. We have placed a deposit on our block (372sqm, 12x31) and signed our papers pending finance (which we will submit once we have settled with a builder). We are building in Taylor's Private Estate, Caversham - I am from QLD and moved to WA in 2014, so was very fussy about where I wanted to build as everything appeared so small and EXPENSIVE! In Jan I started looking and found so many builders and sales people pushed for Dayton but my heart was set on Taylor's. Plus there were a lot of developer inclusions that we really liked and would bring costs down, like soakwells, fencing, and front landscaping & it is under RMD30 coding - WINNER I can say I narrowed down my builder by quality we had seen in our area (we live in Taylor's renting), site cleanliness and tradie quality as well as 'standard inclusions'. I found a few builders I absolutely did not like, including 1 who I said I was not going with but insisted on contacting me on a private number & others whose 'standard' inclusions were not standard at all!! Originally in Jan I set up a meeting at Homegroup WA however our rep was not keen at all to work with me on a plan particularly back then when we looked at a small 10m front 300sqm block - this was difficult and I went sour and turned away from building. Now 3 months on I gave it another shot and explained what had happened to HGWA and was set a new rep who has been absolutely amazing; we have a custom plan thanks to my brother who is in amazing architect and knows the in's and out's this is straight off a cad system not the sketch. So HGWA have been very open to work with us and the plan we want, it has been hard given my brother is in QLD to so they are also very patient. We were also very thorough about what we would like as a inclusions in our 'ultimate home' so were turned away by multiple builders for being 'too high end' of first home buyers - we are just smart with our money & residual value of the property it is also very difficult to manage meetings when your partner works away for 2 weeks and you cram your meetings into 1 day (so we are prepared). So I have been super excited to start our first home forum as I know I will have multiple questions and love feedback and multiple sets of eyes (currently I ask my brother 601 questions a day haha!) With first home buyers does anyone know costing of taxes and fees for purchasing land? We were advised that GST isn't applicable to first home buyers? Also what do you recommend including in your building contract? I have reviewed a few plans and got some tricks up my sleeve, like the removal of doors and hinges when painting or they'll paint over them. Also we have been advised things like tiling & exposed agg would be very expensive through HGWA, so have people sourced this themselves and at what cost? Also we want a proper theatre system and tech package incl security installed - could someone recommend a good priced company? Look forward to following everyone's journey and people following ours Follow our build: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=87175 Location: http://www.taylorprivateestate.com.au/ :z::-D Re: First home buyers & builders in Caversham WA! 4Mar 28, 2017 11:06 am Thank you all!! So excited to see the final sketch and platinum facade We are all about the facade as well - so our concept is detailed Follow our build: https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=87175 Location: http://www.taylorprivateestate.com.au/ :z::-D Re: First home buyers & builders in Caversham WA! 5Apr 14, 2017 1:09 pm Congrats on your new build, your plan looks fantastic! To be truthfully honest, include as much as you can in your contract, waterfall kitchen benches, upgraded sinks or ovens, nbn & full height tiling if you want it. If you want anything that isn't in HG's range (stone,tiles) it's ridiculously expensive. We realized pretty early on that we had made the wrong choice as we didn't want the Della vita options, or the standard kitchen package, which has cost an absolute fortune to have certain brands and other items that are standard with almost every other builder. We removed the driveway, alfresco & main floor tiling to do ourselves. If I could do it all again, I would have them build a shell & take out all of the bathroom tiling, their over and above pricing for non standard tiles and laying is an absolute rip off. Our kitchen stone alone was an extra $8k and we could have easily saved another 8k + supplying our own tiles & tiler Follow our HGWA build in Baldivis @ http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.p ... 4#p1604334 Follow our HGWA build in Baldivis @ https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=83352&f=31&p=1604334#p1604334 Re: First home buyers & builders in Caversham WA! 6Sep 14, 2017 5:34 pm Congratulations! I loved it there! Beautiful location. We were initially considering Taylor's Private Estates. The builder even showed us "our" lot in Redondo St. Only downside is it is 30-45 mins from the city, wife is not keen on driving that long to work everyday. This made me really sad as I already pictured our dream home to be built on that land. lol But as they say "happy wife is happy life" so we had to look somewhere else. Hi All, we are starting to think of building with Masterpiece Builders in Victoria, has anyone had any feedback or experience with them 0 13588 1 7941 So it looks like we finally have some movement on site! Definitely later than expected, but I'll take any progress at this point. I'll drop by over the weekend to get… 5 27708 |