Being naive to the whole building caper, what we thought was a reasonably flat block was considered by the major builders as too severe (3.7 m over 40 m). So off to a small builder that builds on slopes.
We started off by choosing a builder (will not name them), who did nothing with our deposit. In fact, I did all the preliminary drawings and kept pushing them for some action. After 6 months, we decided to take our business elsewhere.
We then went back to the major builders, who remarkably had changes their song in the year since first speaking with them. They were all happy to build, except the site cost were going to be around $30k. After again going down the track of dwindling down the choices to one, going through the effort of picking upgrades etc, (to the point of getting close to signing contracts), things changed. The builder, at the final stage said they had re-looked at the house siting and wanted to charge an extra $30k to drop the garage approx. 1m (and remove internal access). STUFF THAT!
So back to the drawing boards. On a whim, we went back to a builder that really impressed us at the beginning of everything. We thought they only built single story houses (miscommunication/understanding on our behalf). But thank god we did. Enter BH Developments!
They are a small mob (25 - 30 homes a year), but they do a quality job. You don't deal with a sales rep that has no idea, you get to deal with one of the builders from day dot. We got a straight talking, no BS, person. And what a relief that was. They put us onto their draftees to design a house for our block. After 10 iterations, we finally decided on the plans. Then follows, developer approval, engineering, council approval, loan approval...
So now we are here, ready to start. We can't wait to see our house go from lines on a piece of paper to bricks and mortar!
