My parents built a new house twice when I was growing up. Although I might not have understood the challenges they faced while building, I remember our family outings to many display homes.
In 2015, I toyed with the idea of knocking down and rebuilding my own house – inspired by those adventures from my formative years. I started visiting several display homes across Adelaide. At this stage, the idea of knocking down and rebuilding was completely new, and there was much to learn.
At the time I had narrowed my choices down to three builders. Two were volume builders – Metricon and Hickinbotham. The other was a custom builder – Uniq Homes. For each of these builders, I visited all of their available display homes and started to develop my requirements for budget quotations. Unfortunately, the timing wasn’t right for me and I decided not to pursue any of the options. However, I did learn a lot through the process.
I learned that choosing a builder I could trust, for one of the biggest purchases I would make, was an extremely daunting process. This is probably the reason why the decision to build a house was put on ice until 2018 – almost three years later!
However, I didn’t lose sight of the dream. I started paying close attention to the layouts, fittings and finishes of my family and friends’ houses. During work trips and holidays, I paid close attention to the styling of hotel rooms and home stays. Over those 3 years, I built up a collection of house layouts and photos of desirable features and finishes. I invested this time in maturing the ideas and distilling my preferences.
During that time, I also met my partner. Together we built upon the dream to create new house. The build was now a reflection of our shared interests, ideas and tastes.
To help us choose a design, we visited countless display homes across Adelaide, collected catalogues of their house designs, and scoured the internet for ideas. To compare the builders and their home designs, we began focusing on 4 key features:
- The Process
- The House Structure and Layout
- Design and Styling
- Cost
Originally, we started down the custom build path. We considered engaging an architect to design a bespoke layout – driven by a desire to incorporate sustainable design practises and features into the build. Whilst we would have loved to pursue this option, the initial budget estimates we received from custom builders deterred us from exploring this further.
Based on others’ experiences, we were also under the impression that a custom design may have added considerable time and cost to our overall build. Being in the position we are now, with the knowledge and experience that we have gained, I believe we would consider this option for a future build.
Also, around that time, several small and custom builders had run into financial troubles – leaving a wake of building horror stories behind. This influenced our thought process and plan of attack. We focussed on finding a quality volume builder with a lower risk profile, who was able to accommodate reasonable design changes.
As we visited the various builders across Adelaide’s display villages, we began to gauge builders by a combination of:
- Build quality
- Customer service
- Online customer reviews
We also noted several interesting experiences:
- We were surprised to find that some of the display homes from lower cost volume builders had low quality finishes or minor visible defects. We were expecting all the display homes to be top-notch, even if it were only to fool potential customers!
- In some display homes, we came across salespeople who lacked knowledge and understanding of their products. This did not fill us with confidence.
- Many building layouts lacked practicality or were just plain unimaginative. They often felt like cookie cutter versions of places that we had seen down the road.
- We also found it rare to come across stylish colour and material palettes that we liked. We are by no means architects or interior designers, and taste is very personal. However, I still think a thoughtful design and style can be recognised, or at least appreciated, by a layperson even if something is not to their taste.
It was disappointing to have these experiences but is also made it easier to narrow down our list of potential builders. Building a house was going to be one of the most expensive purchases that we were ever going to make. We figured, if a builder wasn’t able to take care of their showroom piece, how would they treat our own build?
We narrowed down our choice of builders by doing the following:
- We wrote an excel spreadsheet that listed every builder in the Adelaide area and classified them by size (e.g. volume/medium/small/custom).
- We visited many display homes and assessed the build quality, architectural design, and customer service.
- We assessed publicly available designs and dimensions to determine if it would fit on our land.
- We compared base pricing and standard specifications (in our opinion, if you intend to do extensive customisation and upgrades then this may not be the best way to compare).
In the end, we decided to build with Metricon for the following reasons:
- Volume builder with an established national presence
- Good quality assurance and quality control (QA/QC) process outlined
- Site supervisors were responsible for a lower number of simultaneous builds
- Display home build quality appeared acceptable
- The layouts were well-thought-out and incorporated interesting design features (some other builders may have employed similar design features, however these felt tacked-on instead of in harmony with the overall layout)
- Interior fit-out was often visually pleasing
- Several build options would suitably fit on our block of land
- We experienced extremely positive customer service with one of the sales representatives
