This thread is to share my home building experience. I started the journey of building my home in Sep 2017. After visiting several builders at HomeWorld in Kellyville (NSW) we picked Kurmond homes just because we liked the design (floor plan) of Glenleigh. I hope to post the significant milestones and timelines on this page. I would like to invite everyone who is building "Glenleigh" at the moment to share their experience here too.
Sep 2017 - Started visiting the Builders in homeworld. So many to pick, we realized that this is not going to be an easy task. We liked one thing from some builder and another thing from the other builder.
Nov 2017 - After visiting so many housed now we are sure we are going to pick Glenleigh, we realized that this would be the house for us with minimum design changes.
4th Nov 2017 - We met Mike at Kurmond homes homeworld branch. Mike looked like a very motivated sales person and was willing to help. During this meeting, we needed several changes to the original plan, and Mike showed no hesitation to accommodate everything we asked. He also provided a rough estimated cost for those changes. Once we went home, we received the Preliminary Quote via email from Mike.
21st Nov 2017 - We paid the initial deposit at Kurmond homes to request a tender. We also discussed several (minor) changes to the plans. Mike showed no hesitations
5th Dec 2017 - Received the Contour Survey from Mike (yes sure, the survey person and borehole person visited the site already!). No surprises in the survey its only a gentle slope in the land. The slope in the building area is less than 1m.
19th Dec 2017 - Received the Preliminary Plans from Mike. Looks great!,
19th Jan 2018 - Received the "Tender Rev A" from Mike. With the changes we needed it seems the prices are hitting the upper bound of our initial budget! Anyways, after seeing the initial plans we needed few more changes. We thought we would be able to discuss with Mike how to cut down the total cost.
4th Feb 2018 - More discussions with Mike on some plan changes. We needed full brick for the entire house, but Mike suggested we would be able to cut some odd $6000 if we use clad for the upstairs room over the garage. My wife was fine with that idea firstly to save money, secondly to add some contrast to look instead of full brick.
12th Feb 2018 - Received the updated tender from Mike. Now there is a new $5000 cost added in the tender for BASIX upgrade. This is not something we asked. Not exactly sure why cost came up in the new tender all the sudden. All we saved going back to Clad for the front upstairs bedroom is now gone for this new cost. No price reduction in the tender as we expected. We emailed our concerns on this to Mike, but no explanation received. But later in a face to face meeting, he told us that they needed to provide more accurate tender.
13th Feb 2018 - We noticed some discrepancies between the items included in the tender and what we needed in the plans. We needed to include all the items in the tender as we didn't want any future disputes. And most importantly we needed to know exact cost before we accept/sign the tender. We emailed all those missing items to Mike, after a few iterations we got everything included in the tender. bravo to Mike for being proactive here, he even followed this up on his dayoff.
20th Feb 2018 - Received the "Tender Rev E" from Mike. Looks good (not the price ha ha... but..) all the items are included now in the tender.
22th Feb 2018 - Today the Tender Presentation is done. Paid a large amount of payment for Tender acceptance! Mike did the tender presentation at Homeworld, then after that, we visited Kurmond homes head office at Windsor to visit color studio. A lady gave us some basic introduction to their color studio and process. But seems she is not going to give any prices on the spot for upgrades we would like to do (if the costing is within budget).
Next big payment would be signing "the preliminary agreement". Kurmond sent the agreement that we are going to sign. We got our solicitor to look at that. She pointed out few things to be changed but seems Kurmond home reluctant to change those as they claim that it is a HIA agreement. Also, we found out we have to pay another $4000 for "Hydraulic and additional AHD Survey" in addition to the payment for the initial agreement. Anyways this cost is mentioned in the tender so no major dispute here.
4th Mar 2018 - Signed the "Initial Agreement" and paid a big chunk of money. Also paid for "Hydraulic and additional AHD Survey". Mike told that the next step is color selection and told that the head office we contact us soon.
12th Mar 2018 - Didn't hear anything from Kurmond head office. So we sent an email to Mike. Then we recieved an email today itself from 'Sherry' from the head office mentioning that a customer service consultant and color consulatant would be contacting us this week.
15th Mar 2018 - Hmmmm... why didn't the color consultant and CSO contact us yet.... We paid all the money but nothing much happened since then... Today is Thursday and the week going to end! (May be/obviously we are bit panic here), just sent a reminder to Sherry again, and she replied saying "she did advise" that CSO will contact us this week. Yes, she was correct, Cherie (CSO) contacted us immediately. Seems like a nice person. We asked her when will the color consultant would contact us, she mentioned that it will be next week. So far so good
16th Mar 2018 - Kurmond CSO has given a commitment of a milestone. Cherie says "The drafting and compliance team are in the progress of preparing all your plans necessary for lodging for approval under Council Development Application (DA) and we will forward the plans to you for signing prior to lodging. We are aiming to have Authority plans completed and ready for signing week ending 13th April 2018"
20th Mar 2018 - Color consultant contacted us and scheduled a full day session for color selection. They are fully booked before Easter. We are given color selection date 5th Apr 2018. It is going to be a 9 am to 4 pm full-time job!
27th May 2018 - Stay tuned guys! I will do a big update here end next week about how the process goes with Kurmond homes. I just need to give them one more week before I jumping on the gun
03rd June 2018: Heard back from the CSO and the color consultant but yet we didn't get the final version of authority plans to review. Color consultant also had sent some updated documents that had few errors. But lot more to do in these "departments"
We yet to get the appointments with the staircase provider and with the electrician, but the color consultant said that she actioned on those.
So nothing happened as planned date of 13th April, but things seem to be slowly moving ahead. Hope things will be faster in rest of the journey....
08th June 2018 - Kurmond home restored my faith on them! They were very active last week and completed all the required paperwork to submit the authority plans to the council. Not only that today they posted the paperwork to the council!!! Happy days....
Yet Kurmond homes has few things to complete with regards to the color selection, but I got to know that the color consultant was away on some urgent family matter, that I understand and those things can happen. Again the great thing with Kurmond homes is that they seem to have assigned someone else from their team to follow up the things getting delayed due to the absence of the color consultant. Few things I am waiting now would not have an immediate delay to the process so we can wait.
Now it seems some waiting time till the council comes back on their approvals. I will update here soon after some update on my process.
13 August 2018 - I apologize that I could not update this thread for a while. It is so lengthy and very depressive process. Apparently, there were some dramas with the previous color selection lady and she is no more available. The new color selection lady seems to be extremely overloaded. Both DA and CC approvals have come through a few weeks ago. But Kurmond says there are above 10 files ahead my job until it goes the final work by the drafting team. I feel they are really understaffed. My work situation could affect on Oct which I don't know yet. I need to wrap everything soonest possible and need to go to the bank for the unconditional loan approaval. I don't know how long these people will take. but they told me they will do the best they can.
I know many other people who built with different builders who even started after me and they now in the middle of the construction. Kurmond team is obviously slow, not really the people but I think they are understaffed and also it seems they can't keep people for a long time. I really started regretting the decision that I got to build a house. I should have bought some pre-built house. Kurmond sales people told us the constructions will start within 6 months of signing the tender. Am I still too late, that I need to find out.
19 Augest 2018 - It is becoming harder to reach the Kurmond people over the phone. The reception is now used to say that the color consultant is with a client most of the times I call them.
It seems the color selection lady needs to go through the color selections again, it sounds like that last consultant had made a mess with my color selections. But it seems this is quite usual for Kurmond homes as other people who build with Kurmond explains. It seems everyone hates Kurmond office work and process.
Other issue is that they now claim that the Diamond Elite selections can't be fit in to the bathrooms. They now are going to install smaller free standing tubs instead of the 1800 once that are mentioned in the Elite broucher. No refund is also given.
10 September 2018 - We are having very stressful time with Kurmond homes. Kurmond CO is "complaining" us there are 8 jobs in front of our jobs to be finalized, therefore our job will take at least 6 weeks to prepare the contract! The way she putting up things is like its our fault that they have a mess in their office and process, and she basically "blames" us that it will be unfair for the other customers to prioritise our job. The CO's attitudes seem like she is totally fine even if a customer walks away! She doesn't seem to care at all about a loss of a business which Kurmond homes has done a significant amount of work already. The feeling I got is some people in Kurmond staff have built up an attitude to just get around with a customer escalation rather honestly willing to resolve the issue. No wonder why they have so much complains about their office process.
I was thinking to escalate the matter to Kurmond owners (Mr Peter Kulakovski and Mr Michael Kulakovski), but then I thought it will fair for Kurmond staff to first escalate this to their management. So I escalated the matter to someone in their managment, she didn't reply but she had got our CO herself to response, which she now has committed to finalizing the final tender end of this week (Friday) and then to finalize final construction plans end of next week.
I hope she will keep her word on her commitments.
27 September 2018 - What a disappointment with Kurmond staff, we are having a hard time with these people. It seems they don't need to finish construction plans any sooner. They say those still 4 weeks away. We signed the initial contract last Feb, now it is 8 months already, what a pain in the butt with these people, not asking anything but just to do their job!
Anyone who is considering Kurmond homes, this is your future too!!! The timelines above will tell you what to expect from them....
I think it is time to go to Fair Trading and get them involved....