This isn't the first time we've built a house but it's the first time we have built a house for us so it may as well be!
STEP 1, Finding a Builder
we found the dream house, it's built by Henley Main Vue and it's called the Almalfi. It has a beautiful huge, i mean HUGE master bedroom/retreat, butlers pantry, open plan living dine a study and 3 spare bedrooms (for extra shoes). We both agreed (which was a miracle) so all we needed to do was find a block of land that it would fit on.
We explained to the sales rep (let's call him Dave to protect him) that once we could find the land we would sign the contract so any help with finding land 10km from the city North or North East would be appreciated. Dave was very helpful with this and called me the next week to explain he had found some land at Campbelltown (a little more than 10km but we were still listening) I asked what the frontage was and he said 12 meters, pity the house we had discussed required a minimum 17 metres frontage.
We kept looking for ourselves when we came across a block of land at Rostrevor, we dropped in to see Dave again to ask if the Almalfi would fit. We didn't know much about building envelopes & block orientation etc etc so really needed Dave's help on this. Dave confidently responded "just buy the block, we'll work it out" mmmmm i don't think so.
Starting to get frustrated we called Henley head office to explain we want to buy one of their houses, the "Almalfi' but just need a little bit of help with finding the right block to build it on. Head office was really good, they passed on our details to their senior sales rep. He contacted us within the week and asked us to send him an email a link to the block we were considering and the house we wanted to build so he could send back a site plan. Great we were finally getting somewhere. PING the email was responded to within about 10 minutes, excited i opened it to see that senior had sent me the site plan with the wrong house on it.
This was officially in the too hard basket, time to consider another builder
The next few weekends passed by visiting display homes, having sales reps promise to call us back (still waiting). We started to wonder, were we expecting too much? I work in sales myself and know what level of service i offer so was it wrong to expect the same. But we had experienced great service, we had built before and had great service from the rep, she was really good.
Time warp: 4 years Adam and i decided to build our first investment property, we were GREEN, really GREEN, we came across a sales rep that rather than taking advantage of this held our hands through the whole process and explained all of the things that we didn't even know we needed to ask.
There was our answer we needed to find that sales rep wherever she was and see if they could build a house we like (rather than finding a house we like and hoping they employed good sales people)
We had found her, our building Angel and she was working for METRICON.Google, Averil Garrett
