Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 4Jan 17, 2017 3:05 pm First_Timer_Ray Hi Parabatzis. That's no good that you had a negative experience with Burbank 8 years ago. My sister built with them about that time and things didn't go as smoothly as she would have liked either. 9 years ago we built with Met ri con and could not fault them - as far as we were concerned we would 100% recommend them to others. Sure we had a few hiccups but they fixed everything. What you find with most builders though is that for everyone who has a great experience there is another that is disappointed in some way by the same company. I've heard of plenty of horror stories about M. It really depends on your expectations and how well they resolve issues because there are always issues. We decided on a floor plan to maximise our land orientation (backyard facing north, crossover on the left when facing the block). Mainvue and Boutique had some gorgeous layouts but they just weren't right for us - either the orientation was wrong with living areas to the side, or didn't have a separate study, or the garage couldn't be widened to 6m wide, or the ensuite couldn't accomodate a bath, or there wasn't a lounge at the front of the home, or 2 structural changes only and no moving wet rooms... trust me, I'm pretty fussy! I just had a quick look at the Granvue page but none of the layouts for 4 bed with 16m frontage were right for us. We aren't looking for perfection because that will never happen, but we also are pretty exacting on how things need to be. So far Burbank are ticking all the boxes. Hi, That's great to hear so much to consider when building and you can be fussy as we have been through it before and know what we want know, what we should of done haha. All the best with your build Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 5Feb 28, 2017 3:46 pm So, we haven't heard anything more from Burbank so far except for an automatically generated welcome email saying they had received our paperwork at the office and we would receive a job number and be contacted by the Client Relations Officer. That was over a month ago. I still want to adjust and double check a few things before we proceed to selections. I think I'll give it another 2 weeks and if we still haven't heard then I'll contact them to make sure our plans haven't fallen into a black hole from the promo/range change-over period. We did pay a visit to the Burbank Edge Studio though. It was a little disappointing that we were ignored most of the time, while others had staff walking them through everything. To be fair, it was very busy at 1pm on a Saturday and staff were alternating lunch breaks during that time so they were understaffed. It's not a huge deal as we are not at the selection stage yet but I think they need an appointment system for the weekends (FWIW I had submitted an online form over a week prior saying when we intended to visit but it seems that didn't count for much as I didn't even get a response). One of the positives at the studio was how upfront they were with pricing. Most items had a specific $ amount listed so you knew how much of an upgrade it was (or if it was a standard inclusion) which is very different to our last builder that only stated what 'category' the item was and had to get pricing for everything once it was chosen. I was a bit disappointed with the lack of choice in some areas though - especially the range of floor tiles, but it is what it is and I'm sure I'll find something to fit (hopefully). At least I can now do some research on items they do provide to compare. On the whole, the brands offered and pricing seemed fairly good - or at least not outrageously expensive. Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 6May 12, 2017 12:03 pm So we are still playing the waiting game. I contacted our sales consultant because we hadn't heard any more from admin, and was told that because we still had a fair few months to wait until the land settles, he had requested admin to hold our file so it wouldn't proceed to full deposit until closer to the time. That was nice of them (better the money be earning interest for us than them), but would have been nice if he had told us this too. If I don't hear from someone by the end of this month, then I'll be contacting them again to start things going for our selections and final contracts so we are all set to start as soon as the land titles in (hopefully) September. In the mean time I have been playing around on SketchUp to mock up our plan. It has given me a better idea of where things need to be located and how everything will flow. We have changed the open plan living layout to have a raked ceiling in the dining - which is the living room on the original plans, and the remainder of the room will have a flat ceiling at the max. raked height which will be our kitchen and living room. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Waiting is the hardest part! Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 7Aug 12, 2017 8:51 am We finally received an update from the land developer this week, saying our land title will be delayed and they are now expecting Feb-April 2018 due to a drainage strategy review (redesign of engineering and drainage for our stage), meaning a 6 month delay on what we were expecting. We signed our initial deposit with Burbank in November 2016, so we have the standard 12 months to begin our build, so we will likely be hit with delay charges by them. I contacted Consumer Affairs Victoria to ask about the liability of the developer to deliver the land within the promised time period, but their response was that because it is a contract entered into, it isn't something that can be legislated for, and any agreement is based on the wording of the contract, and of course they are written with the developers interests in mind, not in the buyers interests. It is so frustrating that we buy something with an end date promised (of course it isn't written in the contract), they have no accountability to fulfill it. Still *not so patiently* waiting... Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 8Nov 29, 2017 1:02 pm A few months back our original sales rep from Burbank emailed to let us know he was moving to another company and we would be able to continue communications with his replacement. After not hearing from her for over a month after she took over, I decided to touch base and ask how things were going, as the last documents we received were back in July and still needed some adjustments. So start of October I forwarded her the communications we had previously had and what documents we had received to date, and she said she would look at the drawings and either contact us herself or get someone from head office to call. Another month later I sent another email asking how things were going with no response for over a week, so I filled in a request form on the Burbank website explaining we were waiting on drawings and quote and we would like to get everything finalised (knowing that business slows at this time of year and we still need to make some adjustments which all take time). I missed a call from the Sales Manager and admittedly I didn't call him back straight away, and then discovered an email in my Junk folder from him saying that our job was currently "on hold" and if they didn't hear back from us they would cancel our new home request . My husband rang him back and explained that WE were waiting for THEM to finalise everything but that there were some changes that still needed to be made. His response was that we had already signed off on drawings (just the stock standard drawings because we had none from our changed plans) and we couldn't make any further changes. He was quite adamant that we couldn't alter anything else after our last quote (which was still incorrect) but he would try and work out where we were up to. He had obviously not read the request I had written on the website, or looked at our file which I had provided the job number for. When hubby got off the phone he was ready to ask for our money back (we even paid an extra deposit to have our altered drawings done up, but we'd had nothing from them). If they were going to be difficult I'd even walk without a refund. I even started looking through plans with other builders that we could adapt if we had to pull out. Thankfully today we received a slightly nicer phone call from him (no apologies or anything) saying he thought we should sit down with "an experienced consultant" and go through everything to make sure it is all right, and we can proceed from there. Maybe he could see now that we weren't trying to be difficult but that our plans were never finalised. So we have organised a time next week to meet with this consultant who sounds very thorough and fingers crossed we can get everything sorted out - final structural changes, layout changes, and inclusions. Then we will just wait for the pricing, and hopefully proceed to selections early next year. Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 9Dec 07, 2017 10:12 am We had the meeting with our "experienced sales consultant" yesterday which was a bit of a mixed bag. She was very pleasant and noted down all of the changes that we wanted, but it was like starting from scratch. She had drawn up a new floorplan which had some changes to the last one we saw; some changes we had requested like the kitchen and laundry layouts, but some changes that we didn't want like increasing the size of the powder room (which in turn reduced the size of the ensuite), relocating the garage door to open directly onto the entry instead of tucked around the corner next to the laundry door, pillars we had changed or removed had been reverted back to the original plans, the additional width we added to the garage had disappeared (one of our main requirements), the overheads and sink had disappeared from the pantry, etc. On leaving I felt confident we explained all the changes, but then afterwards began to worry what had been changed that we didn't pick up? I followed up yesterday afternoon with my concern of the powder room size because after drawing it myself it was apparent a 1200mm shower and a double vanity would not fit in the ensuite because it had been reduced to accommodate the powder room (which does not need to be bigger). She quickly shot back a reply saying we could not make any more changes from what we had discussed that morning, so then I had to explain that this was all discussed with our original sales consultant even before we paid our initial deposit, and he said these changes (bigger shower and vanity) were done at the Studio selections as long as we kept enough room for them in the plan. I then had to forward her all of the email trail where we were clearly told we could have these things included. I also emailed her the last drawings we received (which were this time last year!) so she could compare what had changed since and if we had asked for these changes. This is the problem of being handed over to someone new who doesn't know the history of our communications and what we are expecting based on what we have been told. Apparently she has scheduled a meeting with QA at head office to go over all of our alterations on Monday and from this point we will not be able to make any further changes. She said she will forward me the plans before then so I can double check everything - and I'm sure there will be things missed. She also warned us that it was likely the final drawings would not be back to us until February, and after this we can proceed to selections and final contracts. At this rate our land will be titled before all of these loose ends are tied up and we will be waiting for them, which doesn't really seem fair considering we were made to wait so long to get to this point. Part of me also wonders if this is a tactic they use to try and persuade people to quickly sign off. We certainly won't be signing off on anything we are not 100% happy with and we are prepared to walk if they become difficult (maybe this is what they want too - they don't want to have to make changes?). Second Time 'Round Re: NOT Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 10Dec 18, 2017 12:27 pm So it seems Burbank are digging in their heels. We have been told that we can no longer get the Big Deal promotion we signed up with (pay $40k and get $85k in upgrades), and if we want to make the changes to the layout we requested we need to start over from scratch with a new submission, meaning we have to pay the base price of the house as of now ($10k more than when we signed), the "Fixed Price" site costs have increased (estimated at about $3k more), and the new pricing for all of the upgrades which we are already $45k worse off because of not getting the promo - basically meaning they want us to now pay over $58k more, with no guarantees they would now allow the changes we requested right from the start, which was the reason we chose this plan. Hubby just got some legal advice and it seems we have grounds for getting our deposit back but I'm not holding my breath. Had we known this 6 months ago we could have started the process with someone else and locked in the pricing from 6 months ago but of course, everything goes up every quarter or half year, so not only have we wasted 12 months of our time on this (I have spent literally hundreds of hours sketching up the floorplan and going over everything 100 times), we are also financially worse off because of it - both with the deposit paid and price increases in that time. It will be interesting to see how this plays out but I think it's safe to say WE WILL NOT BE BUILDING WITH BURBANK. The worst part is trying to find another builder with a plan that will fit our needs, or can be altered to suit - we've already been through this 12 months ago and I didn't think we would have to be doing it again! Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 11Dec 22, 2017 11:34 am It seems the head office is willing to work with us using our original pricing and only charge a variation of $1420 (which is $5/m2 of the house) to do up our plans again (would be nice if we had any!) and we will be charged $2000 per quarter past 12 months from initial deposit (which was last month). I think this is fair, but we won't sit down with the consultant until mid January to go over everything and we will only get one shot at it. I've sent them my drawings and notes based on the last quote we received back in July, so lets hope this gets finalised. In some respects it seems a little harsh that we are being charged for a variation when nothing was finalised prior, but with the extra time we have had we have been able to adjust little things, so I think it will be worth it. We are just hoping it can go smoothly from here on. Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 13Feb 15, 2018 9:53 am To finish off the story, we met with the experienced Burbank sales consultant to go over the plans I had sent them. Firstly the printer wouldn't work to be able to print off a plan for us (if I believed in omens this wasn't a good start), then we were told they had spoken with the drafts person and we couldn't have the powder room smaller because the depth of a vanity is 600mm (which is a kitchen bench depth) and they won't do a custom sized vanity, so I asked her for a tape measure and proceeded to go inside the display which we were sitting in the garage of and measure it's powder room vanity depth, the bathroom vanity depth and ensuite vanity depth, all of which were different measurements, but none as wide as 600mm so this story didn't add up. On the plans I sent I didn't allow enough distance from the boundary to allow the 450mm eaves (I only allowed 1600mm but it should have been 1650mm, despite only needing 1m side clearance) so all of the rooms would have to be adjusted 50mm - wouldn't it be helpful if people told you up front what size is required... Everything else I had drawn and sent to her was ok but we would have to pay the non-refundable $1420 to proceed and have the drafts person go over everything and be approved/properly drawn, and there was no guarantee that any of our requests would be given the ok. We felt like we would be handing over more money with no guarantee that we would end up getting what we wanted, and more than likely would get a response that "it can't be done". To top it off, afterwards the consultant introduced us to the finance person (in the next garage) and her introduction was "these are my nightmare clients" - said tongue in cheek but no doubt with some sincerity. The finance lady then told me I needed to earn more money because we would not be approved for a loan on our current income, which got me a bit worried but after a phone call to our bank we were assured it would not be a problem. She was definitely not my favourite person. All of this combined, we knew we had to rip off the bandaid and break up with Burbank because from the sounds of it, none of us were happy with the arrangement. After forwarding the emails from very early on that stated our initial deposit would be fully refunded if we weren't happy and since the second deposit we made was to have custom drawings done which we never got, we felt we were entitled to a full refund of all money paid. We were sent a cancellation form to sign and after sending it back it took almost 2 weeks, but we finally had our deposit refunded to us yesterday. It is unfortunate that things did not turn out as planned. In hindsight we should have gone directly to a custom builder rather than try and change something to meet our requirements. No hard feelings, just lessons learnt. Onwards and upwards. Second Time 'Round Re: Building the Spotswood 284 by Burbank 14Feb 15, 2018 10:29 am How disappointing after all that time. Hopefully you can find a builder to work with. Hi All, Recently we have signed a contract with Burbank and we are not aware that they have just DORSET, SURREY, HAMPSHIRE, KENT, PILBARA and REDGUM bricks from PGH are… 0 3164 go upvc window frames ensure insulation under colorbond. not just sarking, lighter color roof also not sure if you have seen this viewtopic.php?t=5823 last couple of pages… 4 110574 |