Rhys A.Member since 3 Dec 2019.

Professional pre-construction support, lengthy approval processSo far the experience with Metricon has been OK. The pre-construction support has been very professional and helpful and we've appreciated the attention we've received from [name removed].
We are now… approved to build our home, however it's been a mission to get this far. The biggest issue has been the time taken to get to the construction approval stage, which is now approaching 18 months. We only received our construction certificate just over a week ago. The reason it's taken so long is that we had to cancel our initial Metricon contract because we were sold a set of plans that increased in costs and became significantly over our budget due to post contract variations. My advice is to sign a contract that is 10-20% below your build budget. We now have a reduced set of plans and we've had approximately 10 variations raised on top of the contract we signed, which has increased our contract by approx 10%. What I find frustrating is that you are not allowed to complete your internal selections (kitchen, flooring, electrical) before you sign your contract. Yes there are 'provisions' and 'bonus offers' for these expenses in your contract, however even with conservative selections you will exceed these provisions. Also the hydraulics (stormwater) variations can be significant. The provisions just don't cover the actual variations. Be prepared for post contract variations. We are yet to commence building and I'm nervous about additional variations to come. In saying all that, we are excited that we are finally moving forward and heading towards construction. We have appreciated the support and guidance from [name removed] (pre-construction manager) to get us to this point. My other advice is which is not related to Metricon is to study your planning certificate before purchasing/building on a block of land. Can you get approval with a private certifier for development approval (DA) or do you have to go to council for DA? Going via council will add significant time and limit your options re: building size, hard surface areas etc.