11 months after signing up for our block over a coffee and a handshake, settlement went through and the block became ours.
Initially (way back in October 2009) we found a house plan that we liked, with a project builder. We made some minor modifications to the plan and were more or less happy to proceed...then came the hard sell!!! Pressure to sign on the dotted line before December and we had had a chance to really look around sent us scurrying away.
A chance encounter with some old friends lead us to investigate another builder, (I am not going to name them here as it could get sticky!) This company, a very large building company, looked at our ideas and basically rehashed them into their own plan. This was about December 2009. The plans were good and we were happy, but things started to fall apart when we had to wait a month for variations or trying to book in for appointments became difficult! It was April when the costings were finally emailed to us. Over $90 000 in site costs just about floored us! As you can see from the pictures, it is a pretty flat (1.5m fall from front to back), sandy block!
We waited...nothing...didn't hear back from this company!!!! Now this is a very large building company with a very good reputation, I don't know but we just seem to have been forgotten and slipped through the cracks. Dilemma time now, we loved the plan, the price was astonomical...we decided to wait and see how the company would follow up. They didn't, we waited. I guess we could have rung and asked about the next step but were were still floored about the site costs, let alone the building costs and were not particularly happy with the service we were receiving.
We now had to decide what to do.
Should we get our plans redrawn (remember we have to change them by at least 10%) with an architect and then ask builders to quote on them? Scary and expensive if you have no experience in the industry.
Should we go back to building company 1? They were very pushy and would not allow us to use our own products etc.
Should we try another building company? Having already investigated building with two big companies we were not sure this was the way we wanted to go. We wanted some control over products used and wanted to have more input than most project builders would allow. A boutique builder to do a one-of design...looked incredibly expensive and beyond our budget.
We were wasting time, while our block is sitting there empty we are paying rent!
Another chance encounter- see sometimes things happen for a reason. We decided to attend the Home Show at the Convention Centre. Here we met Craig from Master Building Brokers. Craig is a designer with MBB and organised to meet and basically designed a home for us. Now this sounds simple but we did meet lots, Craig came to us at our house and took on board all our concerns and ideas. He was very patient and was prepared to wade through my enormous scrapfile of bits and pieces to make sure the home he designed suited what we were looking for. I cannot speak highly enough of Craig, he was always accessible to us through phone and email, thanks Craig- can't wait for you to see the finished product!
With Craig's expertise we had a plan drawn up with all the specifications we wanted. MBB then took this plan and asked a variety of builders to quote on it. We also took the plan and asked a few builders that we knew to have a look and quote on it also.
We were making progress.
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