Elara Homes

Awesome Builder, Highly Recommend – Fantastic experience and we would build with Elara again and again. From the day we walked into the display home and greeted by Debbie we knew we were on a winner! The service we have received has been exceptional. What we liked was the upgrades in the display were not over the top and you could clearly see what was standard and what wasn’t. Although we didn’t see the display of our home, as it’s now closed, we were lucky enough to go through a couples home that had just completed their build. They advised us that they had a great experience and their build went as planned. This filled us with confidence to sign up and go ahead. Unlike some of the big companies we were able to make changes to the plan and it didn’t cost us a fortune. In some instances it cost us nothing, this is unheard of. We didn’t make a massive amount of changes but we added eves, bigger windows, removed a wall, removed wall niches, added doors, flipped the garage from one end of the house to the other etc Stephen the owner / supervisor of our job made the build a breeze. He has a great attitude and never did he see problems, just solutions. He was accomodating to our unusual requests and he has been so approachable the entire way. Our build came in as per the contract price. We are in love with our home and can not wait to start making memories in it. Thank you to all the staff involved from sales staff, office staff and tradies. You have all made this a great experience. We can not recommend Elara highly enough.

Admin nightmare, cheap for a reason – We signed/paid our deposit to Elara after looking at their display homes in Dec 2021. We choose a plan that there was no existing display home for, we were assured we could make any changes to the plan as long as it was within the exterior walls of the original home. Once we paid our lock in deposit, we were told we could not make our proposed changes as the home would then not be an Elara designed home. We should have had alarm bells then to get out. We were also assured if we cancelled the build at any time, we would own all the reports that we had paid for (surveys, soil and engineering reports etc). Of course we would not get our deposits back ($5000), but we had agreed to that and that was ok. It is now March 2023 and we cancelled our build 4 months ago, I have asked for the surveys 3 times, without any luck of Elara handing them over and providing an excuse each time - "we need to check to make sure all invoices have been paid". They do not uphold their contracts and I will be making a complaint to the VBA. They are a very dishonest builder who gives the industry a bad name. They are a very very very small builder. One person does the sales of new homes, electrical placement, drafting design, etc. The one person in the office is useless at getting the new homes organised and this is why by Nov 2022, we still had not confirmed our floor plan and the details within it - colours, materials, etc. We cancelled our build in Nov 2022 due to the lack of organisation and urgency - the one said office person went on annual leave overseas for 3 months in June 2021. They then got someone else in to replace her who was fantastic (give her the job). But we had to explain to her where we were at with the build as the person who went on annual leave just uped and left without any handover. We were getting there with finalising plans - I had created a spreadsheet of exactly everything we wanted with prices given to me by Elara. I handed over this spreadsheet so they could draw up the tender. The tender came back incorrect 3 times, I also offered to spend the day with them to do the tender to answer questions and get everything correct, but apparently it wasn't needed. Once the girl came back from annual leave, the person that we were dealing with left and there was no handover back, and again it is like groundhog day explaining everything that we wanted and where we were at. Frustrating is beyond words what we experienced. I have no idea if the builder/owner has any idea what goes on in his company. He doesn't return or answer his phone and there is no email communication with him. He will be one of the ones crying poor when his business goes under this year. They get the plans drawn up professionally by another company, and you are relying on Elara to communicate with them to get the plans right. Our plans were always wrong, again wasting time that we didn't have which we were also charged for. Now building prices have gone up, our borrowing capacity has dropped and we are wasting money renting while our block of land sits vacant. If we had just chosen another builder, we would probably be in a new home now. Don't build with Elara. They have costed us a lot more than $5K.

Do Not Build With This Company – Do not build with this company unless you want to be disappointed!!! They don’t want to know you once they receive their final payment and you will be brushed off like you are absolute rubbish. We have been chasing up things that need to be fixed since moving in and a year on still haven’t received the maintenance required and every time you call they will have to “ follow that up tomorrow “ and they never call back. Treat there customers like crap and are so uninterested in helping you. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone! And going by the below review other people have experience absolute crap from this company too. STAY CLEAR .