Our CSC contacted us first thing this morning to discuss the rescheduling of the appointments and also to quickly touch on some of our other concerns. We should be expecting to see all documents by mid next week, fingers crossed that all changes are correct and no further changes will be required. Thank you for your prompt response, it is very much appreciated!

Really hoping we don't face any more delays. We both would really like to start the building process. In terms of the base price extension, our CSC assured us that out contract will be unconditional before the deadline of August 2014 so we will not face any further penalties.

Let's hope that is true.

Three days before the contract signing appointment and we still hadn't seen the updated building contract and variations for our build. We sent an email to our CSC requested that the contract and tiles appointment be rescheduled as we would not have sufficient time to review all their updates. The response from our CSC was that the contract signing appointment could be scheduled in early July however the next available date available for the tiles appointment would be in August. I'm sorry but August is just not acceptable!! These delays are unacceptable!!  The delays are due to the many issues we identified after reviewing the new homes contract drafted by the builder. I just can't understand how there seems to be no quality checks by anyone before these important documents are distributed to the customer.

Just some of the issues found:

- Upgrades to bench tops, upgrade only applied to 2/4 areas of the house. You would think that consistency is the key to a good build?! Guess not in this case.

- descriptions containing no cost additions to items left out. Wouldn't have been surprised if they took the chance to throw more cost at us later on.

- Light switch on electrical plan not even installed on a wall, instead it's floating in mid air.

- INCORRECT STAIRS AGAIN

- Missing items for light switches, some door handles

- Location of split system is WRONG in the plans. frustrating considering in the electrical plan this was in the correct spot.

Our CSC has been very responsive in trying to address all these issues. However I'm not sure about everyone else involved in preparing this contract. We understand that there are probably a ton of other customers that are also building houses, but if proper care was taken with version 1 of the building contract we wouldn't be in this situation - rescheduling appointments, facing further delays, incurring penalties due to that ridiculous base price extension lie, waiting for all the variation documents to be drafted, waiting for staircase to be corrected for the 4th time, the list goes on.....

Again, WE ARE NOT SIGNING ANY CONTRACT THAT STILL HAS UNRESOLVED ISSUES!! No amount or level of promises from the builder (assuring us that all this will defintely be updated for our approval before building commences) will convince us to sign anything that is not issue free. Mr builder, you know very well that we can't go to the council or developer and ask for approval of our design with plans that are incorrect.
We also need to know how much tiles will be (if additional cost is incurred due to our selections) to ensure that its included in the loan. Therefore this appointment needa to occur on the same day as the building contract so both can be presented to the bank.
The bank needs all documents for review in order to give us the funds, they need ALL documents in order to do this, not bits a pieces of documents that are incorrect and unfinished.

Also, how does the builder expect us to provide them with a further 5% deposit at contract signing when they can't even finish drafting the variation documents and tell us what the overall cost is and what 5% of that total cost is!! Think about it please Mr Builder.

We have gotten to the point where the thought has crossed our minds on whether we should lodge a formal complaint or just start talking to other builders again. This whole experience so far has been exhausting and incredibly frustrating.

J.

Our CSC has been on training and meetings over the past few days, but took the time on a Friday afternoon to respond to our issues email with updates for majority of the issues we had raised. Thank You, your quick response is much appreciated! So back to the updates for the issues, out of the 18 issues we had raised, we received updates for 16 of those. Yep you guessed right, the staircase was one of the issues she was not able to give us feedback on. I trust that we will receive feedback on the outstanding items very soon.

We are getting very close to contract signing, I don't believe we will get the updated contract or estimates documents early enough to give us enough time to review them prior to contract signing day. I suspect we will need to reschedule this appointment. This also means we will need to reschedule the tiles appointment that had been scheduled for the same day. Dreading the tiles appointment, we have our fingers crossed that we will walk out of there with a $0 or -$x variation.

Very exciting to receive an email from our conveyancer to advise us that the land documentation is currently with the Land Registry Office, with registration anticipated in the next few weeks!! Finally we have movement in the right direction!! Settlement will be happening very very soon!! Finally some good news!!! :) If only we could have good luck with our builder and the building contract.....

Now begins the mad rush to secure a home loan which will be most suitable for our situation! Land is ready, but builder is not and if there are any delays the builder penalises us. Considering these latest delays are due to the errors and issues on the builders side relating to the items listed in the new home contract, we don't see how we could be penalised for their errors.

J.

We are quite happy with our new CSC, our emails and queries are responded to within a few days! Thank You!So we have now been sent the draft contract plans and estimates along with sample HIA contract and the Brick Veneer Specifications for our review in preparation for our contract signing at the end of June. So much paperwork and documentation to review!

Our queries regarding the staircase was touched on but after looking at the draft New Home contract, it appears that the staircase is still incorrect not to mention that we received quite a shock to discover that the staircase was double the price of what was signed off in the PC variation request. 

After a full review (yes this is how we spend our weekends and downtime :) ) of the New Home Contract and the multiple variation documents that were provided to us, we came out with 18 issues that needed to be fixed. It is frustrating that even if it's mistakes made by the builder, they don't adjust the draft contract, instead they keep issuing out variations to fix those mistakes. We don't have a lot of confidence that they can track all these variation documents properly and we have made it clear that we will not be willing to sign any building contract where there are outstanding issues and incomplete data.

We received a response from our CSC the next day advising that our estimate and plans were finalised without our selection upgrades as these were not available at the time our contract was prepared and that re-preparation will not be achievable by our building contract signing appointment as they have a lot of jobs in the queue. She assured us that all our variations would be drawn into our final construction plans and she will send them through to us for our approval before building commences. It's getting really frustrating that this builder just does not understand/refusing to accept that we DO NOT want to sign anything that is not FINAL. If we sign off something not final, who's to say that the builder won't just proceed with what the signed off contract listed, and will refuse to include what was left out?

Come on Big M.... a final contract is a FINAL contract!

It seems as though this staircase we selected is causing a bit of confusion over at the Big M. The staircase on display at the display home is a timber staircase with glass balustrades that comes with a hefty price tag, one that we don't think is worth it. So we have gone with the same staircase but instead of the glass balustrade, we decided to go with stainless steel balustrades. This staircase was listed in a variation document clearly detailing that it is stainless steel balustrades instead of glass.

Somehow this variation was not passed onto our Home Decor Consultant... At Studio M, we selected the stainless steel balustrades and after we received the colours selection report, we noticed that this selection had been added to the Studio M variation document by the HDC as an additional cost (on top of what we were already charged for in the signed variation doc). We requested for this duplicate cost to be removed from the variation document but it was a surprise to receive a call from our CSC asking why we had deleted the stainless steel balustrades and stating that we cannot have a staircase without balustrades.

I just don't understand why the signed variation documents are not passed around to all teams that are involved in our build... It was quite simple - the stainless steel balustrades were already included in the item for the staircase in the signed PC variation document, we simply didn't want to be charged for stainless steel balustrades TWICE hence why we asked for the item from the Studio M variations document.