Which builder is best

Hi

We are looking to do a knockdown rebuild in inner west Sydney and have narrowed our choice of builders to Clarendon, Metricon and Wisdom.

Does anyone have any good or bad experience with these builders?

Thanks

Harry

We’ve compared mojo, wisdom and Fowler . We are going with Fowler homes.

Wisdom came out as most expensive
Mojo came out at the cheapest but inclusions are bare minimal, very costly to upgrade
Fowler homes had the best floorplans and best inclusions , very customizable and helpful from the first till the building agreement stage.


I have heard good things about clarendon

lovehouse how did you compare these builders? What was the non price / inclusions criteria, and key differences noted?

Thanks for the insights, I might have a look at Fowler but also glad you have heard good things about Clarendon.

-we prepared a spreadsheet with all the items in the tenders and each upgrade/inclusion prices side by side
-unseen costs (most of the inclusions from two of the builders were PA ''you'll know during studio appointments, lets put a PA for now'', had to research in their social media groups to figure out prices. Whereas Fowler was very transparent from the beginning and gave us firm quotes for all the upgrades we wanted, they were very flexible in customizing the design to our liking
-scored each builder based on the floorplan designs and features of each builder that we liked and disliked. We prioritized what we want
-recent client reviews from IG bloggers and here (mainly on recent build quality, build time and after handover maintenance issues)
-rest is luck i guess

Overall we went with the floorplan design and inclusions we liked more than the price difference

lovehouse did you ask Fowler Homes for the contact details of 5 customers that had built with them recently?, with their privacy permissions of course. I suggest speaking with these people about Fowler's admin performance, build quality, rectification of defects, maintenance period performance etc, either in person or on a mobile phone (showing number!). The reason for this diligence suggestion is many builders commission their own reviews and comments on various social media channels, with multiple avatars purporting to be real customers. I consider its worthwhile speaking with some real people when researching a $500k+ purchase.

Thank you for your advice and ongoing suggestions. No we haven’t asked Fowler for their 5 recommended customers contact. How would we know if they wont be giving us their best commissioned customers list for contact if we ask them? We researched in community FB page on people who have recently build in our neighborhood and general consensus has been good.

From our limited experience of building two houses recently in Sydney (in the last 3 years), what we figured is that an individual build experience can differ very significantly from others and there is a fair bit of luck involved too, irrespective of which builder you go. Additionally my experience and my friends/relatives experience have been better with slightly smaller project builders compared to the big name builders. We dont have a crystal ball, but the type of finish we’re trying to achieve, we’ve seen Fowler build them many times. Now we just have to hope for the best and be diligent with plans etc

lovehouse if Fowler can provide details of happy customers that will advise you then that’s a good sign. If they can’t or won't then that’s a good pre screening question. Consider asking them about customers that will provide you with a realistic balanced account of their admin and building phase performance. Just like an employment reference check.

Alternatively there are other ways to locate a builder's recent builds and you can simply knock on their doors! Most people are genuinely happy to chat and help. Just like on this forum. Given the nature of volume building, nothing is perfect, issues need to be resolved and it’s how a builder manages these issues that provides useful insights into their capability and ethics.

Online information is useful, however relying heavily on this is risky because many builders are covertly manipulating social media platforms to advertise their business and influence customers.