I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND!!!
It all began in 2020, The government had a building grant and we were looking for a builder that would work with our particular block as it isn't the simplest because it requires split levels. I rang around to find any builder I could just to get a quote, couldn't find any! Except, Bullimore Homes found me, someone had passed my phone number onto them and they called me up.
We met with Bullimore onsite and they told us that the house could be built single level - they even said it could be done on waffle pods - and wouldn't need to be split level. This should've been a red flag from the beginning. The builder has no experience at all it seems.
We went with their word and met with architects and engineers to design this flat single level house. Once we had got our design, we were then able to start getting quotes for the build price.
Well, let's just say, we were so close to missing the cut-off date for signing the building contract and they took that long to get the quote to us and write up a contract. This kind of railroaded us into signing with them as I wanted this house built and the grant money.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the worst of it. The builder didn't want to do the cut & retaining for the block; fair enough - usually builders don't do retaining anyway - but this should've raised red flags again that the builder wasn't going to cut the block out, but instead leave it for me to do!
My retaining contractor I would recommend more than any contractor in my life. He's worked so many hours for free for me just to get this project kicked off, at least 60 hours of work he's put in for absolutely nothing for me (i'm in no contract with him)
Anyway, the contractor said to me, "there's no way this is able to be single level - the builder is telling you bull s***"
I started to have my doubts about my choice in builder. I had my retaining guy call someone in the council as he had contacts there, they told him that it MUST BE SPLIT.
I went back to the builder and they freaked. I had the plans drawn accordingly. They were telling me "this will be a variation" - yeah fine, don't care.
Then they told me it can't be a variation, we had to write a stern email outlining that if we do another contract - they wanted a new contract because then it meant they can pocket the deposit money, they even said we would need to pay another deposit for that new contract - we would not be eligible for the grant if they made a new contract.
They have deposits at 5% of the contract price, that was for us $14,000, I asked for it to be lowered, they wanted to siphon all of my money away. They made it 2.5%, that was still $7,000.
They think they work harder than they actually do, they stated they worked 50 hours and they deducted that from my deposit refund. They seemed to come up with problems more than solutions for building this house
They ended the contract. I lost out in the end. Don't use them at all costs. Save your money.
