Well…. Yesterday we had tender.
It was so exciting driving down to Melbourne to pay our 3% deposit and take the next step towards our new home.
That’s where everything fell apart. Site costs were DOUBLE what we had been expecting. Our measly $9000 allowance wasn’t enough as PD won’t build less than a H2 slab, and have recommended piers for support. We are disputing this, as an existing soil report has shown we only require a H1.
There was a mistake on the tender document showing we needed a 1200 cut into the block when we only have 350mm fall. This was picked up, and our tender person left the room to get the site works re estimated. We sat in the room. Bored out of our minds. For 40 minutes. She returned with some good news, in that our $20,000 costs had been reduced to $17,000. We are still waiting to see if this can be improved or not.
Surprise surprise. Everything estimated in our quote (bar one thing) was more than we had allocated in the quote. An extra $5000 of random charges had been added on. Plus, they had forgotten half of the items off the quote too.
So what should have been an hour or two as we had no structural changes, was three full hours. And as we are already right at the top of our budget, and now $20,000 over said budget, we have no choice but to cut back the majority of our planned upgrades.
Category 1 essastone, bricks, tiles, standard plumbing and fixtures, no upgrade to the front door… Not happy.
😦
Building in Ballarat 