Need help choosing Builder!!

The project management software is not a bad thing. It’s just the process the builder uses to manage the material purchases and issue work orders etc for the trades on their builds. Best to employ your own BI, not one recommended and possibly aligned with the builder. As Hotondo is a franchise business, I would expect them to use a common building system for consistency across their members. This would be a good question to ask them; process, systems, quality assurance...what’s different about their product? What are the benefits of contracting them for your build?

We are building with Henley and inclusions are really good campare to other builder. Carlisle is good too, but PD is worst in the market campare to this two. We have very bad experience with PD. Admin staff is very rude and unprofessional. Most of the PD plans are not well engineered, most of their double storey plans have unwanted pillars in hallway and living area which looks very odd. Go with Henley very well design floor plans with quality build. Keep in mind Henley is very slow in building process, but will give quality end product and will finish in contract time frame.

It's a long thread, not sure if the OP found a builder of their choice but I wonder why does everyone go to the usual top 5 suspects. I've noticed people are apprehensive going to a smaller/medium builders who may be offering better/similar inclusion at a similar price to that of Henley/PD/Carlisle/Metricon. Is everyone too scared of the small builders folding during the build process ? Some of these builders have been in the market for 10-15 years.
During my hunt, I was impressed by few of the designs & inclusions by Nostra,Orbit, Omnia, Hotondo etc and best of all they allow you to customise the plans to your liking.
Overall the entire building industry is d0dgy then why chase the biggies ?

Instead of hunting for the standard inclusions such as tiles or taps (they all are mostly average price/quality stuff anyway as luxury homes/houses and level of their inclusions is a totally different topic where just a kitchen can cost more than half of typical project builder house) you should rather focus on the quality of the build and technologies used for building your house, e.g. if you get RBV or double brick on rafted slab from a builder A with a free blow up and thermal camera testing for the price of BV with more "poshy" inclusions on waffle pod from the builder B or let's the builder allows you to customise your roof trusses for attic/storage space + structural flooring (those generally cost more).

In general, focus on the "inclusions" which won't be possible to change, e.g. higher ceilings or more spacious house is another aspect. Tiles, taps, floors, WCs, cabinets, doors - this thing will be relatively easy to upgrade in the future.

Yes you are right and when we upgrade it to standard floor and quality door etc etc it will come to the same price as what big builder charge. I dont know about other builder, but with Henley they are offering us 50 years structural warranty, 12 months maintains etc. See im not supporting any particular builder what I am saying is building a house is one of the biggest investment an ordinary person make. Dont take any chance just to save few $$.

So according to you which builder do you think we should go with and what we should consider in builder selection process. I think all this builders are there to make money. Some will charge you upfront and some with upgrades.

My suggested considerations assessing builders, in order of importance is:

Honesty and ethics
Personal recommendations of real past customers
Contract terms
Design
Price
Display home aesthetics
Marketing and sales talk

You would hope Henley had improved over the years.
We built with them 22 years ago, with a front balcony (which we didn't really use much apart from some Christmas deco a couple of times years ago).

Anyway, recently we had some tiles fall off the front and side edges during some very strong winds, and when we investigated, also found the floor tiles had collapsed into the frame. When the insurance assessor came out and checked, it was determined that the tiles had been laid directly on the tongue and groove boarding (no waterproofing membrane or sealing of any kind), and the edge tiles were glued on with internal adhesive (he was surprised they hadn't all fallen off).

To cut a long story short, they rejected the claim as it wasn't done to the correct standard (modern?), so we had to pay for repairs ourselves (in the region of $5,000 mind you)! Trying to find similar colour tiles to the brick was a big problem, tile ranges change so frequently!

Hi thats very sad to hear about your tiles, apart from tiles what else is not according to the building standard?