KDR - Greystanes NSW - Lily Homes, Jasmine 34/36

Dealing with council was interesting to say the least.

3 people, 3 different opinions. Last guy seems to be the one everyone else listens to, what an absolute champion to deal with !

Tender next. Seems like i'm talking to myself but that's ok, and not exactly out of character. At least it's a record of progress i guess...

Haha, thanks !

Have "almost" finalised plans - just mucking around with internal walls for room sizing and trying to decide what works best. It's pretty overwhelming when it's the first time you've built that's for sure. And it's only early days !

Will pop something up once i've decided on ground floor layout, the top floor won't change a great deal.

Hey Chellos,
Im keen to follow your build.
Hubby and I have always wanted to do KDR for our old house in Liverpool but so worried about the hidden costs. I like the look of Lily too.
Good luck with it all

Hi guys,

Apologies for lack of response. Actually forgot my password and haven’t been online for a bit ! 🙄

We are meeting (finally !) next week to finalise our plans and also costs.

Was supposed to do it pre Xmas but I ended up in hospital for a week, then recovery at home so that wasted 3 weeks...

Cheers !

We signed with Clarendon today.

Now building a (little bigger than standard) Boston 36 with floorplan as per the one on display at Parklea. Fingers crossed we have a better experience with Clarendon than we did with Lily...

End cost was a little higher (<30k) but the finishes and inclusions were way better. The "Summer of Free" promotion was great.

And to be honest, the cost of "upgrades" were literally half the price. Happy with our decision so far, and the Clarendon team were happy to credit us with what we spent with Lily so happy days...

Will start a new build thread.

Thanks Michael at Lily, you're a champ. Your team at head office let you down mate. Badly.

Hi,

I just thought I'd share my experience as I was trying to look for some Lily Home reviews.
We are building a custom design with Lily homes (based a little bit off the Jasper) and was interested when hearing about the problems Chellos had at head office.
About 12months ago, we decided to engage with Lily homes. The sales man at the office was really helpful initially, trouble is he was really slooooow, with a lot of too and fro with us trying to explain what we wanted, moving things here and there etc. He ended up being not as thorough or reliable as we first thought.

So about 9 months after that, we end up in head office, our case manager Leora is an absolute legand! Nothing is a problem for her and I would be one of their most podantic clients. I am always pleasant and polite, I just have a lot of questions and am very specific about window types and customised doors etc. We've also built before with AV Jennings many years ago so I am VERY podantic and specific about what we want and the look we are trying to achieve.
I did find that any extras or upgrades are HUGELY expensive and what you get with the Lily home is very standard. I've upgraded everything (not to the most extravagent by any means but just didn''t want cheap fittings) Many other builders we looked at like Wisdom and Rawson etc were offering stone benchtops, upgraded taps etc as standard. But Lily offered more design flexibility (we thought. )
So anyway, the dramas with us somewhat started when we went to do colours. First the colour department was closed for renovation (this was early December 2018 ), then closed for xmas (OK, I understand that). First available appointment with their consultant then was end of March! So we took that, then she double booked us so we had to delay another week. I wanted a number of items that weren't standard so we then waited weeks for their colour consultant to get back to us.

I wanted to design specific things in our kitchen, but never got to sit down with a kitchen designer, I've just been penciling corrections backwards and forwards going through the colour consultant who clearly has no idea what they are talking about. The consultant told me magnetic push catches would be really expensive on our kitchen cupboards and we would be cheaper getting the cupboard doors made a bit longer to save costs.........Well that was thousands (yes about 2.5K) on top of the price, so I then asked them to price me for the magnets instead which ended up being a few hundred dollars. Our cabintary drawings have had to be corrected several times with them still making errors (eg. a double sink where a single should be etc). This all would have been made simpler if I met with the cabinet designer themselves (obviously Lily homes outsources it).
I also wanted upgrades to the air conditioning but after a few emails, it was clear that the consultant did not understand what I was talking about so I ended up asking to speak directly with the air con supplier. (this helped a lot and I recommend doing this).

I'm so annoyed , and have found the consultant to be quite short and at times abrupt with her emails, sending responses is big bold red text, Takes days to respond and has returned my phone call once out of 7 times I have tried to call. Many of the issues could be easily clarified with a simple 2 min phone call but because she refuses to call, we are left with emails.
I actually rang to complain one day and was told the colour department works autonomously! What the hell does that mean?
I believe the colour department is possibly understaffed which is why the never return a phone call or respond promptly to an email and obviously there is no supervisor over seeing this section which I just don't understand.

Next are the tiles. Lily provide one tile supplier with one office who doesn't have an open showroom so you have to make an appointment even just to visit and have a look around (I'm not talking about when your doing your tile selections). There are no prices on any of the tiles, there are tiles here there and everywhere so its a bit confusing. Whilst the lady working in there is lovely, I really wanted the same tile to be in my main areas and also flowing into my powder room and laundry (which is common, I have pics of new clarendon homes with it) but the Lily homes tiler will only do a small 300x300 tile in the bathrooms and powder room because he said he can't get the fall.
But I don't care about the fall, I'm paying about 800K for this house, so I want what I want, but it seems they won't do it. So now I am questioning if I should get my own tiler to do the entire job. (we are already using our own electrician for the entire job). In addition, I wanted to increase the tiled area in a very small WC that is 1mtr x 1.5mtr and they are charging me $2800 for a standard tile. I have renovated heaps before so I am gobsmacked at the price of that extra tiling. I have found a tile at Beaumont tiles which I love but the Lily homes tiler only uses Italian imported tiles apparently so I can't get it. In addition, they have to order a sample tile which takes weeks to come in. We have had a bad experience before where the batch was so different to the sample tile, that we ripped them up the day they were laid so hence why I am so worried using this tiler and possible batch issues.

The carpet they offered in the standard range was very standard and only a couple of options, very disapointing so again another upgrade, not extravagent but just the next level up.

So on a positive note, we have CDC which was approved in 2 weeks. That was 4 weeks ago and now still waiting on a commencement date.

I am also questioning if it may have been cheaper to go with a private builder after all is said and done. We have only paid our deposit so far and haven't yet signed to commence builiding yet. I also wonder if we could take our plans to another builder now (I still have Rawson contacting me all the time) to see what they would cost. I assume they are all somewhat the same though.

I'll keep an update of the progress of the house.

Hiddle

We bailed on Lilly after poor experience in the head office now with Beechwood we have upgraded alot but we wanted certain things and hopefully only doing this once. Still not convinced will get to build the house due to now a tree issue with council which is annoying as I raised the tree right up front as being a possible issue all of sudden the house doesn't fit with out moving forward and taking out a large native tree.