New home buyer traps

New home builder

Friday, July 31, 2015
Many clients come to Berstan Homes with the same stories about builders behaving badly and some of the stories are quite alarming.  Many of the problems seem to stem from new home buyers looking for a builder often make the same mistake of going for the cheapest price. When the cheapest possible price is incorporated in to your home build it will in most cases create cost cutting by the builder. There are several ways this can happen, one is
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Major builder problems

Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Speaking to a client of mine the other day and they have a friend that built with a major Perth based building company. I was amazed to hear the home was built and the builder refused to do the driveway and alfresco concreting works.  The builder's representative stated that the building company only do driveway and alfresco concreting works on their display homes. So the owner was left to find and organise their own concreting contractors to complete their home. 
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Site manager’s workloads out of control

Friday, June 27, 2014
A site manager friend came to me the other day complaining about workload, he works for one of the major new home building companies. What he said alarmed me; he was in charge of 32 sites and was not coping well. Little wonder he was under pressure a sustainable level of sites in my opinion would be around 15 sites. It is little wonder the burn out rate for the larger new home building companies is so high.
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Many new home builds seem to have storage problems

Friday, June 27, 2014
I have been passed many homes of late and have noticed the cars are not in the garage where they belong due to the garage being filled up with everything but the kitchen sink. At design stage many of these issues could be solved by maybe extending the garage length and building more cupboards.
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Beware of cheap tiles

Wednesday, June 18, 2014
A client of mine the other day purchased their own tiles to save on the build cost only to find out the tiles where seconds at best. Which created a problem with the tiles being unusable and ultimately cost the home owner more for the tiles having to be replaced.
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New home builder or not

Thursday, June 05, 2014
Marketing companies are popping up everywhere and who are you buying your home from? a builder or a marketing company. There are many positives in dealing directly with your builder rather than a third party. By dealing directly with your builder you will be able to use his or her knowledge to your advantage with regards to design, location and your buildings functionality. By dealing with a marketing sales agent they have little or no building experience and untimely can
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New home build with cupping laminated floor boards

Wednesday, June 04, 2014
Why was this happening the owner asked?  The simple answer was the owners partner had flooded the laundry which is easily done and water flowed out to the flooring in the hallway. The water had been wiped up but the damage had already been done causing the flooring to swell up and cup.
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New home builder lift out very interesting

Monday, May 26, 2014
Over the weekend I notice a home lift out in one of the popular weekend newspapers with some interesting reading. There was a section in the lift out with a lovely well-appointed display home nothing wrong with that the home was magnificent.  What caught my eye was the from price $176k then as displayed price of $349k. This means to me that anybody walking through these homes would have a sense of confusion as to what would and wouldn’t be included. 
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New home builders Advertising Traps

Friday, May 23, 2014
It has come to my notice there are several new home builders advertising house and land packages excluding site costs. This is of major concern because if this exclusion is not noticed by the new homes buyer it will potentially add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of the new home build. So be very careful to read the fine print.  
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