The start of a journey

Do I start at the beginning or just dive into today?

In brief we arrived in Melbourne and could find a home to buy ready to move into, so we bought a house that we will knock down and start the journey to build a big family home. Very happy we got our house not at an auction avoiding the bidding wars with others who want the same as us. Suddenly we were thrown into the idea of building our home, sounds glorious and fun, once in a life time opportunity of building a family home, and getting exactly what we want; reality is never like our dreams.

We started looking at Metricon Homes as they have a great name and several friends in our area have built with them and are really happy with the results. Also looked at private builders and Glenville Homes however we have a budget and most custom homes building what we want in our area cost $800k plus. After living in Sydney for over a decade we've barely drove more than 3km anywhere regularly, what a shock it was to be in Melbourne and have days of driving 30km here and 20km there to get to all these display home villages. On the surface all the display homes look amazing with interior design packages and finishes that cover up the reality that these are bulk builders and finishes to detail vary extensively.

We decided to start looking at floor plans rather than just reputation and appearance after going through so many homes. Carlise Homes & Metricon look great but the floor plans just didn't work for us. We wanted a very large dinning room area and a big kitchen area as that is the focus for our family - food, kids and entertaining on Friday nights. We went through a Porter Davis Home and knew that their floor plan could work for us if they were willing to make some changes.

 Most people say don't expect volume builders to help with changes, they don't like doing them and you will pay excessively to make these changes. They are right but also wrong. We have made lots of compromises but Porter Davis has made changes for us so we've decided to build with Porter Davis.

So far I don't know anyone else who has built with them in our area, we are the odd ones out, have we made the wrong decision? We will find out soon I guess. If their state sales manager is smart they will be wanting to do a good job in our area and get a good name and reputation. The volume builders make their money with upgrades and extras, we live in an area which is full of knock down rebuilds and they could start to make their money here. It is exactly what Metricon Buildings are doing, and they are doing it well. I do hope we haven't made a bad choice in choosing Porter Davis (PD).

Their sales person (ADJ) was amazing and very knowledgeable, patient and experienced in the building industry. Had it not been him I'm sure we would have gone to Metricon.
More posts soon.