Clarendon Homes

We were lucky to have [name removed], Site manager. He was very committed and keen to deliver a quality home. He didn’t rush and made sure we are informed of every step.
Overall journey was very smooth. Clarendon with the matured processes is really making the big difference. We are very happy and would definitely recommend!

Couple of concerns :|

* colour studio experience would have been better as few consultants didn’t spend much time and have not suggested/recommended
* multiple people to work with before the file reaches construction

Our site manager, [name removed], was extremely professional and honest during our build. He did not rush the process, and ensured that we were 100% happy with everything. We were impressed with the quality of our home, and were pleasantly surprised at the lack of issues.

The admin support from Clarendon ([name removed] in particular) was also extremely convenient and helpful.

Hearing stories from people about other companies we expected hidden costs, but there were none with Clarendon. They were very upfront about the final price.

My partner and I both feel extremely lucky to have both [name removed] and [name removed] to guide us through this process. We truly felt like they genuinely wanted to make the experience enjoyable and create a beautiful home for us. Clarendon are lucky to have them.

If we were to build again in the future, we would choose Clarendon without a doubt.

I had a great experience with Clarendon from the day we met James Bond (Sales Consultant). We have been always kept in the loop and had someone to fall back on if and when we needed information or clarification. The entire process was a breeze and i would like to commend on the professionalism shown by the following people. James Bond, Terri Sofos, Jane Whata.

We started the building journey from 3 months ago. This is my first KDR. The tender and contract stages were finished smoothly, I need to say, Jason and Terry are very good. I had to go through under DA due to set back issue of my floor plan. The council is not nice but Clarendon customer service is quite helpful and shed light on some very difficult questions in DA approval. Many thanks Jane. Their response is prompt and polite, which I feel quite happy with.

Now we are in construction stage, so far so good.

It all started with a Contract having the wrong address & the house in the wrong location. It continued with final documentation having Elevations in mirror image & windows of varying heights. I was reassured this was normal & parts of the plans were not "mirror image". I had to insist & travel the 50km's to the head office to point out the glaring mistakes.Things only went downhill from there. We moved on to piers outside of the footprint of the house. Seriously! I was reassured by Clarendon Homes that this was due to it being windy on the day the peers were installed & it would be fine. Obviously this is a ridiculous excuse but it is in writing in an email exchange. I had to demand that the Peers were placed under the footprint of the house to comply with the Building Code of Australia. Then we moved onto preparing for the slab. ALL sewer pipes were run toward the drinking water tank & not to the sewer connection on the complete opposite side of the house. Once again I was reassured that This would be fine, & once again, I had to demand that the job was done properly. The day before the concrete slab was due to be poured the work had to be halted & the steel reinforcement & waffle pods had to be removed so the sewer lines could be run to the correct side of the house. Next The windows arrived with 80% having damaged flashings. These were installed anyway. One of the few positives was the workmanship of the carpenters who did work with care & attention to detail. The Brickwork is a complete disgrace, With holes in the mortar & loose bricks. The wet areas are a complete disaster. Tiles in the wrong place, wrong pattern, poorly applied & metal trims that appear to have been cut with a hammer. All wet area floors are at different heights to each other & one shower floor is higher than the surrounding bathroom floor. (less than ideal for drainage) We are now at the stage where the wet area tiles are having to be removed, repaired & Replaced. Clarendon Homes seems to be operated as a glorified call centre who organise 3rd party trades to do the work at the lowest possible price. No trades works directly for Clarendon Homes & none of these 3rd party tradesmen are EVER supervised on site by a representative from Clarendon.
My experience is that there is ONE Onsite Supervisor to supervise 13 construction sites in the surrounding 50 kilometres. There have been many more problems onsite, These have just been the standouts so far.
To date I have had only a consistent stream of excuses & a refusal to address any problems in writing.
My advice to any prospective customers would be to look elsewhere.
Clarendon Homes are definitely not worth the trouble & Grief I have experienced.

Built or home with Clarendon Febuary 2018. Leda 21 ruby inclusions basic first home. sales went well, down hill soon after signing of the contract.

Our supervisor had no care factor for our home or our money, come handover time house absolute mess. Paint defects inside and out, render defects, grount missing gapping tilling poor, damaged cabinetry, concrete finish terrible, front door damaged, roof screws all over the place, rubbish buried on our block just to name a few things. supervisor knew our lease on our rental was up and basically forced us to take handover on the day.

We have had painters and tilers back, though still not up to scratch. damaged front door replaced only to be damaged by another one of the incompetent tradies. it's now come to my attention that our island bench is 120mm out to one side. our kitchen was not built to the plans this also was never spoken of.

All it come down to was what they can and cant get away with fixing, and still to this day is. dont pay any attention to the finish in there displays, you will get what your given.

If we had my time i would of gone with another builder, we had cheaper tenders for similar builds but went with the bigger company thinking we would not have any of these dramas well clearly not.

BUYER BEWARE

It has been really great associating with Clarendon Homes for my new house construction and happy with the customer service so far. [name removed] was my customer service consultant, who has been very supportive throughout the pre-construction process. Hoping the same would continue during & post construction as well. Thanks for everything.

After about 11 months Clareondon completed building my new home and overall I'm happy with it.

Overall workmanship and build quality was alright. Although I didn't need to, at certain stage I went on site almost daily and checked what workers were doing. I did spot some issues. Once gas meter location was wrong and I asked site manager to tell plumber to change it - turned out that it was not on draft. The other case was some timber structure for roofing was damaged by scaffolding, which seems couldn't be avoided due to the design of house. But this could be improved with better coordination with different tradies.

Final cost is lower than estimated cost since we were able to use a better and cheaper solution for stormwater drainage.

They changed site manager a few times but in general project was managed well and I didn't see obvious delay of any work. I'm quite happy with my last site manager [name removed], he provided me update every week, scheduled work well and had issues fixed quickly after inspection. I could feel that he did care about customers.

My customer service consultant was also changed a few times (I really think Clarendon shouldn't do that often). Fortunately I had two good consultants supporting me at beginning of the project and end of the project. [name removed], my first customer service consultant was very responsible and followed up things well. Julie, my last customer service consultant was quite patient in answering questions and efficient in getting things arranged. I wish all customer service consultants would provide good customer support like what they did.

Even though we had bumpy start with clarendon during the contract phase, the pre-construction phase was very smooth. Joedee our pre-construction consultant has been very professional and efficient throughout the pre- construction phase. She kept us well informed during each stage. Any questions we had were answered quickly and professionally by our customer consultant. I hope construction goes as smooth as pre-construction phase. So far, it is a big thumbs up for Clarendon. Job No: 29913508

I just want to commend the services I have received from Clarendon during the pre-construction. I want to especially commend [Name Removed] for her excellent service. She is efficient, constantly looks after our requests, answers all our concerns patiently, and even offered to help us nag the bank for needed documents:) How is that for customer service:) BA number 00061586.

The design development phase was smooth , our service consultant [name removed] was great at what she did, kept us well informed on every stage the project. Just started construction, slab in. Hope it goes smoothly as the design and tender phase. Our decision to go with Clarendon so far has proved right, but I guess it's too early to say anything yet, let's wait for the const to progress/ complete.

Joedee from Clarendon has been fantastic during the pre-construction phase of our build. She is ultra organised and efficient. There was regular follow up to keep us advised of progress. She kept us on track with all the requirements with choosing the features for our house. She also assisted with us managing council requirements. Job number 29913575

We are now at construction stage and our journey with Clarendon to date has been great. The team have been fantastic - just so responsive, helpful, patient and supportive. Particular mention to our fab Customer Service Representative [name removed] who has been awesome. Really looking forward to the rest of the journey!

I have just reached slab stage and so far I have been happy with the whole process to date. Everyone who I have dealt with has been super helpful and happy to answer all my questions. I hope the actual building process goes as smoothly as my experience so far.

Clarendon is awesome so far from day one to construction stage now our CSC [name removed] what was perfect an example of customer service she is gem of Clarendon.she know how to deal with client and look after them.looking forward to same experience in construction stage .Clarendon rocks...

We finally completed the home, Sheridan 39 with a fair amount of additions / changes, and the end result is fantastic. Yes, like many builds, it cost a fair amount more than the initial base price and there were quite a few changes made along the way but that's all part of the process. Final product - couldn't be happier. Importantly, it was delivered on time... Clarendon had to push the trades but that was to meet our deadline with settlement on the sale of our existing house - we were potentially going to be homeless for a few weeks but Clarendon has come through and we're shifting from one house straight into the other.

So far my experience with Clarendon has been excellent. My customer service consultant has answered all my questions. Very very patient. Now for the build to begin. Can't wait for the end result.

We fell in love with the design of Sheridan 39 and started looking at vacant land at our preferred location. The sale person, [name removed] is fabulous. She is very professional, patience and helpful in accommodating to changes that we are after for our dream home. She has definitely contributed to the key decisions of us selecting Clarendon Home, in addition to the quality of home and design.

Construction commenced in June 2018 and our home was completed in June 2019 - fairly reasonable time frame considering for a large home and with 5 to 6 weeks' Christmas shut down. Glad that the change of site supervisor to [name removed], after a few months of construction and could see the progress of construction. [name removed], the construction team staff also provided a fast response to our queries. We love the design and quality of our home, with the small exception of the kitchen company, the workmanship of few of the kitchen doors - tried to polish instead of replace after the doors were scratched due to whatever the reasons before handed over. The polish signs are visible.

Overall, happy with the construction experience and the end product of our Home. We heard many horror stories from friends who had different builders. Will definitely recommend Clarendon Home to friends and consider Clarendon Home if we have the chance to build again.

Ever since signing the contract we have been bumped around internally with multiple changes in staff at every stage of the build process. We are currently in the construction phase and on to our third foreman. Promised weekly calls do not happen, we are constantly required to follow up every request and promised works do not happen when we are told they had. We are now in our 11th month since excavation and our exteriors are still not completed and there have been multiple issues already with internal works - drafting sent wrong documentation which meant the cut out of our front door in the hebel was completely incorrect. Correct door then needed to be ordered (another three weeks) and left with big gaps in door structure because our correct door is smaller than what was cut out. Stone mason had to be called out as stone bench which we paid a fortune for was not given correct 2-3mm pencil round edges which we paid for. Tiling is currently taking place. We are using the same tiles on walls as to floor. Arrived on site where tiling is half way done only to discover that the tiller has taken the care to make sure the walls & floor match up. Called Clarendon contact & her first question was “Did you pay the extra to make sure your tiles matched up”!!! Shouldn’t have to pay extra to make sure a timer lays your tiles correctly!! Sink installed with 10cm crack and ceramic missing - covered up by installer by placing box over sink (perhaps thinking we wouldn’t actually look underneath). Workers use out beautiful island bench as their work bench - knocked over cans of energy drinks and heavy tools are some of the items I have seen. Shower head height installed at incorrect height which meant re water proofing. Outside lights installed that needed to be corrected as were not centered which means now giprock has to be done again.
The 46 week build time is completely misleading. We’ve been out of our house over 12 months and we have been told that we are at least another 2-3 months away from completion. They call it “Practical Completion” so not actually complete. You then have to go through house and check everything has been done correctly. Customer experience has been extremely frustrating. Would not recommend building with this company. They present a very polished exterior but reality of building with them has been anything but.

We built our home with clarendon in 2018- 2019. We are very happy with the end result and build process. The brickwork was excellent. Any enquiries was taken seriously and handled quickly and professionally by our customer consultant [name removed]. Our site manager [name removed] was very approachable. Any issues raised was solved quickly. We were kept well informed of the building progress by [name removed]. The end result was excellent and we were very happy.