My Fiancé and I are building the two storey Montego 344. We had looked at a few other builders including Metricon and Plantation, but we chose to go with Coral due to their value for money.
The other factor that influenced our decision to go with Coral was the Sales Rep. The first time he spoke to us he actually took us seriously. This is more of a compliment than you realise as so many sales reps from other companies looked at us, looked at the houses we were interested in and made a judgement that we were being unrealistic, we weren’t. Also the follow up was exceptional, at some stages prior to contract he was on the phone with us confirming decisions for the tender letter up to three times a day.
A lot of our colour choices came from a Plantation display, we may have looked more closely into Plantation but they refused to build over the border into northern NSW, despite them having a NSW building licence. While trying to find out some of the colour schemes in the display home, they were very secretive, they wouldn’t give out any information on anything, I couldn’t even get the brand of the paint they use. The information we were after was freely given out by many other builders, just not Plantation.
We had been looking very seriously at one of Metricon’s designs for the past 12 months, to the point of factoring the cost of the home into our current budget. The main reasons that we didn’t go with Metricon was because their base house price had gone up $40,000 from when we first started looking, this was within six months! The cost of the upgrades was also totally unreasonable, for example; we wanted to upgrade to flat roof tiles, Metricon intended to charge us $2500 more than Coral, and yes, they were the exact same roof tiles over a comparable surface area. We also had two sales reps from Metricon mysteriously leave half way through the process of getting the tender price, we then had to start all over again, twice. The final nail in the coffin was they started to build the same house two doors down from us. By going with Coral we feel we have ended up with a better house plan at a much better price.
Why do a blog?
This will be our first house, one of the main reasons I'm putting this blog together is to try and help other people that are building their first home, after going through this process so far I know how big of a task this is and I understand that people could benefit from the help of others, so that’s what I hope to do.
We also found it very hard to find any information on two storey Coral homes, the only two storey Coral homes were down in Sydney, this is too far to travel for many people. After doing a search on the internet, we couldn’t find any information. I would like to make it much easier for people to know what to expect from a two storey Coral home. I plan on putting up lots of photos to help people out if they are deciding to choose a Coral two storey house.
What Changes did we make?
We didn't make any major changes to the design, the only changes we made downstairs was the location of the theatre room doors and straightening the kitchen bench. We have also included a number of upgrades such as a 900mm free standing cooker. We have also had to move the garage back due to council regulations.
Upstairs the only change made was to the ensuite, where we put in a rectangle spa and extended the shower. There are a few windows that were moved or removed, if you are familiar with the plan you will see them in the attached picture below, You can click on the image to see it in higher resolution.
Time Frame
Early January 2009:
We started our process with Coral.19/01/09: We got our preliminary tender letter from the sales rep.
24/01/09: We left our deposit so Coral could do the soil test and we could receive a preliminary tender letter from head office.
23/02/09: It took 4 weeks to receive our preliminary tender letter.
After reading this closely we found a few mistakes and there were also a few things we needed to change e.g. where Coral had placed the water tank and a few little typos. Once we fixed these things up with the sales rep it was time to send off for our updated tender letter.
24/03/09: This process took a lot longer that we thought it would to get this tender letter back, it had been away for three weeks just to get a price on a new slim line water tank and a spa bath.
Just to make things clear it was not me or my fiancé holding things up here, we were in a rush, we did everything A.S.A.P as we had a deadline to get this house built, we are getting married in January 2010, we would have loved to have been able to move into our house before the wedding. As we were now up to 24/03/09, this is looking unlikely.
28/03/09: We met with our sales rep to put our deposit down. With Coral you also have to know what colour you want the roof tiles and in our case the colour of the render. After a few other additions to the tender our contracts were signed we were on our way to council.
7/04/09:We received a letter from Coral to advise us that our signed contracts had been received by head office. The letter also included our site maps, elevations and a few other bits of paper to get us excited about this all going ahead.
We then had to choose our colours and option for everything imaginable (and some things beyond imaginable) that was going into and outside the house, this is one hell of a job if you have never done it before, you will need to be prepared for this. If anyone wants me to go into more detail on options and colours please let me know and I’ll do an update covering the many, many options.
22/04/09: As we were running short on time we made all our colour choices in just over one week. We had our finishes appointment to give Coral our choices, a bit of advice, try to estimate when you will have made all your choices and book your finishes appointment for then. Do not make all of the decisions and then choose to make an appointment, you will be left waiting.
Now all we had to do was wait for the plan to come out of council...
22/05/09: I got a call from Coral to tell me that council had knocked back the plans and that they had to make a changes and resubmit them again to council.
This issue was due to an error from our sales rep.
Our local council requires that all houses are set back 6m from the front boundary, he told us that we could apply to have the 6m set back from the front of the house rather than the portico, as we know now this was not the case. This setback was really unnecessary and is the only issue arising from Coral that has really upset us, up until now the sales rep had been really helpful and seemed to be informed about all requirements.
28/05/09: We received our new site plan and elevation paper work along with our variation to contract. Variations to contract are something you need to get used to as you will have a lot of them, even if you don’t make any changes. So now were up for some more waiting for the council to pass the resubmitted plans.
16/06/09: I rang the council to find out how much longer it would be, they told me it had been approved, they just had to do the paper work.
19/06/09: I received a call from Coral to advise me that the private certifier had received my paper work and we should have a start date in about one week.
I'm sorry this was so long but as you can see this update has condensed the late 6 months of dealing with Coral homes into this one update, I would never have guessed that it would take this long to arrive at this stage. I will try to keep this more up to date once we have started building the house. I will also start to include photos of the build process. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask.
