Toby Searle

It depends on your block and design, but the shape of the timeline is always the same. Our Preliminary Building Agreement (PBA) stage usually takes four to six months, and when you finish it and sign, you take the next available construction slot. Because we only build up to ten homes a year, your start […]

Unexpected costs almost always come from two places: a contract full of guesses, and site costs nobody checked before pricing. Reliability problems almost always come from a third: a builder running more jobs than they can personally stand behind. Check those three things properly and you have removed most of the risk before you sign […]

It depends on what matters most to you. If your main goal is the lowest possible base price on a proven design, a volume builder probably suits you better. If you want a home designed around your block and your life, with a fixed price that holds and one team from start to finish, that […]

You walk your home at full size before we build it. We set the plans out life size, with fake kitchen benches, a dining table and lounges in place, so you can stand in every room and feel it before a single wall exists. It is the simplest step in our whole process, and it […]

When a client brings us a block, we look at three things first: the shape, the slope and whether it is a corner block. Those three tell us most of what we need to know about how easy or expensive the block will be to build on, and you can start assessing them yourself before […]

Because a free quote is fast for one reason: it is a guess. Paying for a proper quote is the only way a builder can give you a real fixed price and stand behind it. You are not paying for a number. You are paying for the work that makes the number true. Think about […]

A fixed price is only fixed if the contract has no allowances, provisional sums or prime costs in it. Those are all guesses, and guesses go up after you sign. The words at the top of the contract mean nothing. The words inside it mean everything. Those three terms are worth knowing before you sign […]

Because the same trades cannot be in two places at once. A builder with too many jobs on hands you around from person to person, and the finish and the timeline slip. How many homes your builder runs at the same time is one of the strongest predictors of the experience you are about to […]

No. The designs on our site are there for ideas, not to pick from. We have not built any of them exactly as shown, and eight or nine in ten of our clients start from a blank canvas. Nothing on our website is a catalogue. It is a conversation starter. That surprises people, because most builder […]