Carlisle Homes Deposit Refund

Good news! We're getting our $1000 deposit back from Carlisle Homes. So, after  a couple of email exchanges between my husband and Carlisle Homes Issue Resolution Team, we got the good news yesterday that they will refund our deposit back. This is a great customer service from Carlisle Homes and we really appreciate this goodwill gesture. This money will go to our upgrades budget.

Just a note to first home builders to learn from our experience, don't rush in paying your deposit even if a builder has a super hyped promotions. Take your time in shopping around and looking for a house design that you like, builder with good reputation and building cost that is fair.

The builders usually adjust their house base price according to an ongoing promotion. Take for example the house that we signed up with Carlisle Homes, Amberley 27. The base price when we signed up was $226,900 with super fabulous promotion called, "Big Bonus Sale" so we thought "that's great, let's sign up straight away and save us heaps of money on upgrades". When the promotion finished, they launch another promotion called "Mid Year Sale"  which was not as good as the one we got, but the base price of the house was reduced to $222, 900. In effect, the new promotion and new base price was just the same as the package we got.

This is also with our experience with Porter Davies, they increased the base price of the house twice during our quotation stage and they also increased price of their promotion packages, but the new promotion packages covers a lot of upgrades that a home owner will usually pick. The old pricing ended up equivalent to the new pricing.  

I can't reiterate this enough, don't rush. You need to take note of your land titling date, the time it takes the builders to process all the building permits and approvals and factor in some delay for the titling and approvals before you sign up with a builder. You need to be aware that builders usually keep the price freeze after you paid your deposit for 1 year and after this period, you will be charge monthly fee for extensions and delays. Carlisle Homes charges $3,000 for the first month of delay and $1,500 for each month after. This was only explained to us on the day we were paying our deposit and an additional budget $6,000 was included in our quotation. This was because our land titling is expected to be in March 2017 and they think that the build will start in June 2017 following all permits and approvals. The Sales Consultant guaranteed us at that time that it was a good decision to pay the deposit because the house price will keep on increasing, but turned out that this was not true. We also thought, at that time, that our land will title earlier given Woodlea's advanced titling status at that time.

Porter Davis' Advantage Range, on the other hand, where our Forsyth 35 belongs has a fixed price guarantee based on their timetable and $1000/month fee for each month after. When signing their quotation, home owners will choose the month that they want to build and if the build time falls within the fixed price period they don't pay anything extra. A fee of $1000/month is charge when there are delays with the building start i..e due to late land titling, if the home owner is not ready with finances, if the preferred site start is after the fixed price guarantee or if the builder has been fully booked during the fixed price guarantee period. For our Forsyth 35 project, we signed up for June 2017 start which was the last month of fixed price guarantee and this times well with the March 2017 land titling.

Another lesson we learned, was you can have your deposit refunded as long as your land has not titled yet and there has been no work done for you yet. The builders will usually say that the deposit is non-refundable but if you look at the fine print of the quotation, it says that you are authorising the builder to use your deposit for soil test and other studies to ascertain the work to be done for your land. If your land has not titled yet, they can't do any soil test or studies for you therefore, your deposit has not been used yet. A Porter Davis sales consultant gave us this idea as we were shopping around and my husband's workmate also managed to get his refund so he thought, he'll give it a try. We were lucky that it has been easy for us, no nasty emails or arbitration, because the Porter Davis consultant advised us that we can go to VCAT if the request for refund has been refused.

You need consider the total cost of your building and make sure that every detail in the quotation is fair. Check out forums and get information from your fellow builders about their building cost.   Carlisle Homes' site cost was the biggest disappointment for us. We were quoted $33,000 for a single storey, 27sq house which we thought at that time was normal for a house in Rockbank and then we joined a Woodlea Residents' page on Facebook. We saw what other builders are charging and also what Carlisle Homes has been charging their other customers. We are seriously being charged the highest site cost per square among all residents, with other site costs as low as $10,000 to as high as $35,000, but those in the upper range are building big, big houses. This, I think was the tipping point that changed our mind about building with Carlisle Homes.

And lastly, if you want to switch to another builder, you can try and ask the new builder to give you a credit or discount for the deposit that you already paid. This was given to us by Porter Davies and we also spoke with other builders who are willing to give us credit, some even more than what we have already paid.  Remember that when you are building your dream house, you need all the money that you can pool to go towards your funds so any credit, bonus or savings will help you achieve your dream.