Hi There,
My wife and I purchased a house and land package back in November 2016 through Simonds in heritage views, Greenvale.
After a lengthy stint, our land finally titled in October 2018 so we were lucky enough to miss the sunset clause.
Before Simonds started building, we were informed that there was going to be a fee of nearly $4000 because we didn’t start building in June 2017. Now this was news to us. In the contract where we signed, the dates of titling where put in at a later date by the Simonds salesperson (which you can clearly the see the different colour pens and handwriting). My question is, when buying a house and land through Simonds, are they legally allowed to charge fees for delay in building when all of this was out of our control? If we purchased the land then the house I understand that they charge fees but this was a package together?
We really don’t know what to do but obviously we will pay it if we don’t have a key to stand on. Just feeling ripped off because they have also charged us another $1000 to re-engineer the house because on the preliminary plans the driveway was on the opposite side to where the developer placed it. The developer is saying that it’s simonds fault because they didn’t clarify that the plans were preliminary and didn’t conduct the appropriate site and soil test etc before hand.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!