We are currently looking at building with Rawson, but reading through this forum thread, it seems most of you guys have experienced a very long pre-build timeline, while waiting for the plans and paperwork to get sorted out by Rawson's head office. I'm seeing a couple of months before the plans are even ready to be submitted to council for development approval. (Granted I haven't read through every single one of the 200+ pages in this monster thread, but so far that seems to be the average.)
I have 2 questions really:
1. Is this timeline the norm? Does every variation on the plan really take 3-4 weeks to get redrawn by Rawson before coming back to be re-checked by you?
2. Customer/sales rep - we've visited several of the Rawson display centres in Sydney, but haven't had any formal discussions with any of their reps. Is anyone here particularly happy with the rep that they've been dealing with? Someone that's happy to answer every little question, and replies to emails/phone calls promptly? (More than happy for people to PM me if not comfortable to quote names publicly here.)
I don't really mind where this person is located within the Sydney region, just looking for someone that we can deal with throughout the pre-build process.
Any comments on the above would be greatly appreciated... and thanks very much for sharing your experiences here, very helpful for us.
Shakeandbake - love the name!
I think this process would be no different to any other builder. My biggest suggestion would be to have as many changes that you want up front to be dealt with when you do your tender with your sales person. THis would reduce alot of time waiting for plans to come back.
Look for things evan as small as where the man hole is, voids that could be used. walls that you want moved - fridge spaces!!!
Then once in the admin process, make sure you keep on top of your CSO - don't wait for them to come back to you, keep on them. And remember that they don't always know everything - so if you know you can have something... push for it.
Good luck!!!