Issues Building with rawson homes

Hi,

I am building with rawson homes with huntley 30 design.

After having bitter start with their selection process as they were giving single appointment for color, electrical and tile and any change after that will comes along with admin fees plan redraw fees costing more than 1000$.

Although somehow passed that stage after bit of drama, construction has started after a delay of 3 months.

Now on the plan kitchen window mentioned as non bottom reveal but actually it is not and when I pointed out this I have been told that this was part of the upgrade and hence cannot be done. Instead they will put the same splash back between window and benchtop. Although plan does mentioned even though they are telling me that I should have talked to them initially and should have added as part of upgrade.

I am really disappointed and frustrated and regret the decision going with rawson homes.

Hi Sajid, its sad to see that your journey is not going the way it should have been.

Hows the issue resolution going on with them now ? Generally if you have anything written on the contract or final plan drawings, they need to oblige it and they cannot comment that basis on some verbal discussion they are doing things.

I am in pre-construction stage with them and just completed my Plan presentation. Do share your journey and experience, there are plenty of senior members who can assist you with the way forward.

Cheers

DO NOT BUILD WITH RAWSON HOMES.

We have had a horrible experience with the Thornton office and Wickham office staff. We have received nasty emails regarding colour selections and contract queries. Extremely unprofessional. They threaten you with their "big lawyers" every chance they get. STAY AWAY.

My husband and I were made sign the building contract under duress and pay $3950. We requested a "subject to finance clause" in the contract and they refused this telling us the HIA contract is a one size fits all and they refuse to change anything. Our valuation came back extremely low due to COVID and market conditions and the contract was over priced. They sent us a sales commission invoice (apparently they had already paid the sales guys the commission and said it was our cost) when we cancelled the contract and added their 25% builders profit to the sales commission invoice. We had a 100% guarantor for the build so we have now had to put our land on the market to pay this sales commission invoice when there was "no sale".

STAY AWAY

What a story. It was certainly their own problem that they have paid their sales guy. Your upside should have been the amount you paid them. Is it something directly reflected in the contract? If not, please consider getting in touch with good building lawyer rather than selling the land.

we also had issues with Rawson homes. we paid a lot $ for the upgrades and didn't get the 'quality' finishes we expected, which is disappointing. Rawson's construction manager refused to rectify further work as they told me they believe it is acceptable, and we are not agreed. while this may not consider as defect related, but we considered as poor quality finish related.
So we decided to bring in the independent parties - our independent inspector, and involve Department of Fair Trading inspector for third opinions and advice. Honestly, we regretted getting the upgrades with them, their quality workmanship is poor, which for the price of the upgrades they asked for is not worth paying.

Thats tough to hear Jo, so hows the situation now ? Has Fair Trading assisted you in regards to reach to any conclusion with Rawson Homes ?

oh not yet, I have contact DFT and is in the process of preparing list of things which we would like DFT inspector to look into when they visit the site. Then DFT case officer will pass my issues to their inspector, that might take a few weeks to schedule with their inspector depends on how busy they are. However, before we decided to approach DFT, we did try to talk with Rawson construction manager, but they insisted to do anything more. So they are aware that we are involving DFT. They even asked us to do so.

I heard people said DFT isn't that helpful. But I am not sure who else to approach though. Finger cross we could reach a good solution once they are involved.

You need to have the DFT mediation before NCAT will accept your application. In my case Metricon simply ignored the DFT order. Don’t expect too much

yeah mate, I thought so. what were your issues with Metricon? did you get them to tribunal? was NCAT any helpful? thanks

Defects with Metricon were mis-aligned frame, non compliant brickwork, faulty waterproofing, slab and 1st floor not level, bows and waves in ceilings and walls, cornices and corners not straight... They considered this to be normal! We identified most of the issues at fixing stage with Houspect. These were ignored so we followed the disputes procedure in the contract, again we were ignored. Lodged a dispute with NSWFT who inspected at a 'mediation meeting' about 6 weeks later. They agreed with most of the defect claims and issued a completion order, which Metricon breached by 5 months. Note that NDSDFT will focus only on Australian Standards and NCC breaches, not examples of poor finishes as presented. These are covered by the ACL's representative samples provisions and are out of scope.

We didn't go to NCAT because that would have further delayed things for an expensive and uncertain result. We chose to engage Metricon's owner in the issue instead. Their site supervisors and building managers had no interest in quality. I concluded Metricon were more concerned about managing their social media positioning than NSWDFT or NCAT. A Metricon staff member forwarded me some internal email trails which demonstrated their behaviours regarding defective works and NSWDFT orders.

In the end most defects were rectified, some we just had to accept. Cost to us was an extra 43 weeks added to the build time, which accounted for about $85,000 in extra rent, storage and other costs, as well the stress. Be aware Rawson Home's approach will be simply to refuse to fix things just to 'wait you out' with financial pressure. If you are in Sydney the cost to you of delays will probably be about $1,000 per week and the cost to them about $120 per week in contractual liquidated damages. Rawson Homes would appreciate the benefit that NSWFT and NCAT provides them to frustrate and delay customers in your situation that they cannot BS.

Hi Norfolk, thanks for sharing your issues and experiences of your build. I can understand the stress, how time consuming and frustrating it was.

we also faced similar experiences, but fortunately Rawson's construction manager was not difficult person to talk/deal with. However, we assigned with a very inexperienced and unorganised site supervisor, so worked with him stressed us right from pre-slab until pre-lining stage. He never took notes of the issues we talked about and mostly i have to follow up lots of times to make sure he didn't ignore the issues and move to next job.

the most stressful times were the pre-slab, slab and frame stages. at pre-slab they didn't provided us 50mm sand bed in the variation and was noted on their engineer's plan, which only my inspector found out. I also called their private certifier to ask why they passed when there wasn't sand there. they said it's not their job to check this. so, how about their engineers? how could their engineer signed off when there was no sand?
then, 2nd pre-slab inspection there was issue with not enough 50mm sand bed, but their concrete truck was already there ready to pour. we couldn't do anything else. after that issues after issues, until frame stage, we complained and they involved their head of construction manager in. So from then, I often involved their head construction manger in the process. After internal lining, he left Rawson homes and we assigned with new site supervisor.


Now after the structural issues, come the quality finishes issues. I guess they may not consider this as defect and was confident for me to proceed with DFT inspector. I won't have high expectation with DFT inspector anyway, just want to have another opinions rather than just listen to the builder. I feel that the system is unfair for us as consumers in the building industry, we paid them the full amount they asked for the upgrades, and yet could not get the quality we wanted in the end. I will have to just spare a few thousands $ to fix things we don't like after handover.

Yes, the system is very unfair and inefficient. Unfortunately the building industry is protected by the governments because its Australia's largest employer, after social services. All sorts of unfair, wasteful, and dangerous building practices are allowed to continue from Opal Towers down to volume consumer builds. Builders are just operating within what they know as the 'rules' here. Normal consumer law does not practically apply to volume builders, unfortunately.

you are very correct. I totally agreed.

Guys, what about your journey with Rawson homes. any luck with you. I have a paid the visit in their Marsdon park office sydney and they explained things very well but I am scare after reading your experiences..

Hi Ali, at the moment I am underway of my house construction with Rawson. So far my experience is good with them. Right from pre construction till date, they have been exceptional in terms of communication and work. Never had a feeling if they trying to make unnecessary bucks. Though my house inspection from independent party us due next week and this will be time to test on the tone of response of Rawson basis on the report comes from inspection and how would they be attending to it.
Considering experience till date, I feel they are good so if require you can progress with them.

We are also underway with the construction of a house with Rawson. I would say that if you're building a standard plan on an easy block you'll be mostly OK. If you're looking to ask for lot's of changes and non-standard stuff and/or have a difficult block then you will have a much harder time of it... I'm speaking from experience here!

In the pre-contract administration phase, check everything. We saved tens of thousands of $ just by challenging pricing errors in the tender and subsequent variations. If you're doing upgrades, try to find the upgrade in one of their display houses and get the display house upgrade list from the staff at the display centre and have the price for the upgrade put into the tender/contract as it will be much cheaper than anything their estimating dept calculates. Check everything in every document/drawing revision, even things that were fixed before seem to get unfixed on subsequent documents/drawings. Do as much as you can in writing, we had our job handed on to so many different people it would have been much more difficult if we couldn't pull out the previous correspondence.

Now that we're in construction things have improved, but as with all construction projects, everything doesn't always go as planned. All you can do is keep a close eye on things and work with your site supervisor to get a good outcome. If you don't know what to look for get yourself a good independent inspector to help you. I've documented in our build thread some of the issues we encountered at the slab stage. When time permits I'll be adding subsequent issues and the solutions that were applied.

The irony of this. The new NSW building commissioner's son is the current Interim CEO of Rawson.

David Chandler is the building commissioner policing unethical builders and his son is Nick Chandler.

I wonder how a complaint would be handled!