Coral Homes Daydream 28 Far North Coast NSW

Hi all. I have been quietly following other people's builds on homeone for a couple of years while waiting for my turn to finally arrive. The experiences shared by others on homeone have been insightful and so I thought that sharing my building experience may also help anyone who chooses to follow my thread.

I will start with lessons learned so far.

Lesson 1: If buying land off the plan and the developer says "completion of construction works expected within 6 months with settlement expected 3 months later" don't believe it. In fact multiply every milestone date they give you by three.

We put our deposit on the land down in April 2016 with an expectation that we would be building by March 2017. After being fed nothing but BS from the developer over more than 2 years we finally settled on the land June 2018. Apparently this is common practice. Its just part of the sales manipulation. It would be helpful, however, if someone told you this at the start.

Lesson 2: Don't be fooled by Coral Homes "beat the price rise"....... maybe beat the price rise for the first estimate but the price rise - and there will be many of them - will catch-up when you finally get around to signing the contract.

We paid our initial deposit with Coral Homes in June 2016 to "beat the price rise". The agreement we signed locked in the price until January 2017 but of course Coral Homes know the developers game and so when the price review comes around the price rises catch-up. We had at least three price reviews while waiting for the land to register and one final review that, at first, meant that we were worse off than if we had a new price estimate. Thankfully, our sales consultant took this up with HO and we had a price reduction that put us back on track for having a contract price that was the same as if we had walked in and asked for a price estimate in June 2018.

Lesson 3: No matter how annoyed developers, builders, conveyancers, solicitors and lenders get with you for constantly checking on progress don't become complacent. Trust no one to make it happen without you having to push them along.

There have been several examples of this but I will give just one. When it was finally time to settle on the land my conveyancer was notified by the developer's solicitor. We had 28 days to settle (original 14 days which is nowhere near enough time to organise finance so I negotiated it up to 28 days). My conveyancer forwarded the solicitor's email to me, the only problem was that it wasn't my email address that my conveyancer sent it to. I heard on the grape vine that my future neighbours had already settled. So with less than a week to go until settlement I called my conveyancer to find out what was going on.

She said that she had been wondering why she hadn't heard from me but of course hadn't thought to call to find out if there was a problem. I asked if we could get an extension. I was told "no, the vendor's solicitor is quite adamant that there will not be an extension". I was now looking at the possibility of defaulting on the contract of sale through no fault of my own. Worst case scenario - lose our deposit. Best case pay default fees of $500 + 8% p.a. calculated daily until we settled.

I called the developer. Thankfully they were sympathetic to our situation and instructed their solicitor to give us a rather generous extension. This particular story has a happy ending but provides an important lesson about the importance of being fastidious during the whole process of buying land and building, No matter how annoying you are perceived to be by your service providers check and follow up and then do it again. Don't wait for them to voluntarily pass on information. Hound them until they become so annoyed that they get the job done just to get your voice out of their ear.

There have been so many lessons but that's probably enough for now.

So this is where we are up to.... we are building a Coral Homes Daydream 28 with a few modifications including many upgrades to the "upgrades". We've signed the building contract, done the tile appointment, electricals and the colour selection. The plans (which still have at least eight errors that I have made multiple attempts to have fixed) are currently with the certifier. We find out next week - hopefully - whether it can go through a certifier as a fast tracked complying development or whether it has to go to council as a full DA.

Between now and next weekend I will get to the fun bit and start putting up some plans and photos.

Thanks for reading.

This is our site plan at contract stage. We are still trying to negotiate the retaining wall. The boundary is on a ridge and the neighbour also plans to cut to the boundary which - at $625 / m - makes the retaining wall pointless and an unnecessary expense.

This is our house plan. Main modifications include:
Pushed the bathroom wall out to the eave which creates a bulkhead above the bath and enabled us to lengthen the vanity..
Took 250 mm out of the walk in robe and 250mm out of the bedroom to increase the size of the ensuite
Rearranged the ensuite.
Put an internal slider on the study and opened the other side to the activity room.
We upgraded nearly every window in the plan including increasing the height of windows and stacked slider in the family rooms to match the 2,550 mm ceiling height.

There is actually quite a list of detail level items that we have tinkered with so if anyone wants to know something specific about anything you see on the plan post a question and I'll answer.

Have you got your colours variations yet? We went for colours last week and they couldn’t give us any prices on our upgrades! So annoying having to wait 4 weeks. We have been with the private certifier for 3 weeks got told after one week it had to go to council and would be sent off in a day or two. A week and a half later still not at council. When council takes 8 weeks feeling pretty annoyed it’s taking this long to forward it all on

Did you add security screens or extra insulation?

Hi Tash,

We tried to put in as many colour selection upgrades into the price estimate and tender letter as we could so that we had a fair idea of what the upgrades were going to cost prior to going to the colour selection (we did have two years to think about it after all).

We had Mary at the colour selection which was on the 10th July. We didn't have too many more upgrades to add and Mary was able to give us prices for most of these. However, there were maybe one of two items - such as an upgrade from midnight to cherry blossom for the exposed aggregate driveway - for which Mary couldn't give us prices.

Having said that when the variation from the colour selection came through there weren't any prices shown so we still haven't had these confirmed. I am not too worried though as we probably only added another $2K at the colours selection.

Something else I have learnt, while you should do your best to nudge things along ultimately you don't have any control over processes such as DA approval. The building process will be less frustrating and stressful if you accept that everything is going to take longer than expected and perfection will not be achieved. Focus on the things that you can control and less so on the things over which you have little or no control. I am non-emotional about my build. I don't get frustrated and I don't get excited either. I just try to focus on being aware of what is going on and keeping a close watch on developing problems and working toward resolving these as they arise.

I am expecting that the certifier will not be able to process ours as a complying development either. There are a few parameters that do not meet the conditions for a CCD - such as a small part of the house encroaching ever so slightly past the minimum 6 m forward boundary set-back - which means that it will probably have to go to council for a full DA. That will add a few weeks.

Anyway, it's a bugger that yours will be delayed by the need for it to go to council....... but as I said... you have no control so no point getting frustrated as that emotion is not productive. Just be vigilant in keeping yourself informed of where things are up to.

I hope my words help.

Brad

Hi again Tash,

No security screens. Just fly screens.

Extra insulation over the alfresco only $197 which works out to around $7 / m2.

Our colour selection appointment was 10th July 2018 (but we pretty much knew what we wanted a year or so before the appointment).

These are our external selections:

Colorbond roof - Shale Grey
Gutters and facias - Shale Grey
Full render with primary colour Mt Aspiring and external garage walls Maraetai quarter
Garage door knotwood panel lift - Seville profile - Australian cedar colour.
Front door Savoy XS24 stained with Dulux Intergrain Redwood and Allure omni pull handle (like on Coral's display homes)
Undereave soffit sheeting - White on White PN2G1
Window frame colour - white
Water tank colour - Surfmist
Driveway, entry and porch exposed aggregate - Cherry Blossum

And here is our internal selections (style: keeping it simple and playing it safe):

Internal wall colour - white on white
Floors:
Platinum carpet in media and bedrooms - Grand Terrain - Colour Keystone + 10mm thick blue rubber underlay
Main floor areas including study - spotted gum timber
Wet area floor tiles - Belga Grey 450 x 450
Wet area wall tiles - rectified - white
Bathroom / ensuite:
Bathroom and ensuite vanity - ice snow stone benchtops with riven sublime teak cabinetry
Caroma quatro tapware - but we dropped the shower rail in favour of a fixed adjustable arm.
Posh solus freestanding bath
Feature recess in both b/room and ensuite with matt white penny tile
Kitchen:
Stone bench tops - ice snow - 40mm edge to island bench
Main cabintry - Polar white silk finish on main cabinterty
Overhead cupboards - Laminex Impressions - riven - sublime teak
Clark double bowl o/mount sink with stainless steel strainer
Milli "Glance" mixer
Hettich Innotech Atria pull out kitchen waste rubbish bin system
900 mm ceramic cook top, 900mm oven and under cupboard concealed range hood
splashback - 75mm x 300mm - union white - subway tile laid brick bond
Laundry:
Modified storage cupboard to a broom closet
2.1 m laminate bench top (mineral stone) with washer and dryer under + overhead cupboards (polar white) and bulkhead

There is more but that will do for the list in this forum

For the Coral Homes Clipsec / Clipsal appointment you are not given any information on unit prices. I am not sure if this is specific to the Coral Homes process or if its generic to other builders also. However, what I do know is that it would have been extremely helpful to have a price list prior to being forced to make multiple - and potentially costly - decisions in the 2 hr appointment .

We had some insight into what the costs might be after seeing someone elses price list on Homeone - but the price list was posted 3 years ago so I thought I'd share our price list which is from July 2018.

Just a tip (perhaps warning) for anyone reading this; so that we didn't get a rude shock at the electrical appointment we had an allowance of $6K on top of what Coral Homes offer as standard. We had about $300 change from the $6K but we then needed to buy five fans and three exterior lights (because we didn't like Clipsal's fans and exterior lights).

This is our electrical plan. Maybe four downlights in the family and four in the alfresco might have been better? Doesn't matter we can add more later on if needed.

Lovely colour selections brad! 😄

Thanks mj-mac4

A little bit of modest bling doesn't add that much relative to the total cost of the build and it should add as much value to the house as was spent.

Enjoying a sunset while waiting for DA approval 04/08/18.

North view and west view from approx. position of our future outdoor living room.

Love your color selection . We are thinking of using the same colours for the kitchen.

Main cabintry - Polar white silk finish on main cabinterty
Overhead cupboards - Laminex Impressions - riven - sublime teak

do you know how much was to upgrade and also for the laundry to add the laminate ?
Thanks

Hi ethan870,

Thanks for the compliment on colour selection.

$565 for overhead cupboards
$190 for silk to kitchen cupboards adjacent cooktop
$ 551 for silk to entire kitchen island
$ 242 for sublime teak riven to overhead cupboards
$ 213 because we are using two colours not one
$ 194 to gable to one side of fridge space

Laundry
$1,068 Overhead cupboards including bulk head
$ 800 laminate bench top with underbench cupboards etc. (includes splash back tiling)
-$310 credit for changing existing linen closet to a broom cupboard

These prices first appeared in our price estimate about 18 months ago and the pricing was mostly the same in the final tender letter. Thus the prices that you will be quoted may be a little higher.

Tip: add all of your upgrades to your price estimate / tender letter; don't wait until the colour selection to add them. It is stupid because the price should just be the price, however, many items are more expensive if added at the colour selection and you will not have confirmation on the final cost for 4 weeks or more. If going for finance you are best having it all in the contract price because that is the amount that is approved for finance. The lender will expect you to use your own funds for any upgrades you add after finance is approved.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Thanks a lot for all the infos and congrats again, i really love the color choice.

I will try to add as much as i can in the estimate now instead of waiting. Thanks for the tip.

Have a good one.

Coral have special offers at the colour selection also which means that there are some items, such as the Dulux wash and wear upgrade, that are cheaper at the colour selection. Just remember to check with your sales consultant as you go through each upgrade.

Development application approved 22 August 2018. After waiting two years and 4 months its finally happening!!

Hi Brad, i can see you are building in far north coast NSW. We too are building here, in the new estate Banyan Hill up from Ballina Heights. Where abouts are you?