[Our Story.001] Once upon a time....

Should have put this post in the beginning...

We purchased our house through Auction in early 2006. We went to HomeWorld/Kellyville and a few other exhibition homes in that area many times during the first few months and did a lot of research.

The first project home builder we had some commitment was Clarendon. It was a bit rush as we loved the "Hollywood stair" and "Julian Balcony" in their Edgewater design a lot - even though a few friends suggested to have the stairs facing directly to the front entrance is not good fong-shai.... The sales person Margaret was very helpful, and after a few visits, plus a few struggles, we paid $600 for the land survey and initial drawing to be done. Unfortunately things after that didn't go very well...

First, as they used a junior draft person for the drawing, what we first received on the presentation day wasn't quite right. The garage could only fit one and a half car - what a joke!

Next, Sarah, the lady who did the presentation insisted we should have a split in the middle of the house with 2 or 3 steps due to our land has about 1.8M drop (back of the land is higher). That is, after you entered the house, you need to climb up a few steps before you can access kitchen, family room and other parts at the back of the house.

We understood that this would make the application easier for council approval. We refused to accept this due to concern of safety. Latter, one of their engineers consulted council and confirmed as the drop is not that bad, council "verbally" confirmed the split shouldn't be required.

We calmed down a bit, and after some further research, we found that the upgrade charges was a lot higher then others. They even charge something called "council liaison" fee, which we never heard of with other builders. We even joked if that's some kind of bribery to make the application easier/faster for processing...

The drawing was latter revised with the garage fixed and the split removed. But Sarah still insisted to put a line in the tender saying it's on our request to have the house without the split and should council reject the application it would be our responsibility. We totally lost our interest and confidence with the company and stopped all activities.

Margaret tried very hard to get us back, unfortunately Sarah still wouldn't remove that clause in the tender, plus a few other things, and that's the end with Clarendon.

The next builder we approached, was Domaine home...

To be continued....