Homestead Homes

Broadview Home is U for Useless – Broadview Homes Review On the 29th of December 2017, we signed the paper work with this builder. I would say this was the biggest mistake ever. Once they received the 5% payment the rest was a terrible history. First the sales Rep [name removed] was very rude and so unprofessional. The refused to accommodate changes that we were requesting… Read more

but when he forgot to do something he was quick to say we signed the paper work and nothing could be done. We requested for a big shower but what Broadview delivered was less than what was expected. [name removed] and [name removed] for the Evanston showhome in Calgary, Alberta were short of useful. They were so quick to covering their mistakes so quickly while failing to accommodate our request or changes. They made a big issue on site visitation and refused to accommodate our request as myself and husband work outside of town.

Some minor scratches made while moving in the home were also refused to covered. I have had friends whose builders accommodated such due to moving in; but Broadview homes was very uncooperative and so unreliable. On possession day the site manager also proved Stubborn and unreliable as well. As a first home builder and 2nd property owner, my experience is the worst and would never encourage anyone to go with this builder.

Good all paid but work stopped way behind promised hand over date – All works have come to an end Workman ship fine but very slow, have been promised tiler to come but not turned up told bath was put in found house open bath missing was it never put in or taken back by supplier due to Ashford homes (sister company in Victoria) problems will not answer phone or texts at wits end.  Show details

Great end result – We designed our own home and worked with the Homestead consultant to make it happen. Nothing was too much trouble for her, and we are extremely happy with the end result. Highly recommended to work with, and the workmanship has passed the test of a mate involved in the building industry - he couldn't fault it. Great job all around guys.

Great experience – After looking at many builders decided on Homestead. Very helpful from start to finish. One mix up that was rectified very quickly. Only very minor issues found after living in the house for a couple of months, fixed very quickly. Definitely a company to recommend. No problems like others I know who have built with other builders and ended taking them to court. Good on you Homestead for maintaining your reputation.

Great personalised experience so far – After our research and getting quotes from different builders we found Homestead to be most helpful in providing a what's felt like very personalized experience. The sales consultant has been has been great. Although the process has been quite lengthy, this has been partly due to us changing the plans several times. In which the sales… Read more

consultant happily made the changes to accommodate our small block of land and ultimately achieve plans that we were 100% happy with. They did this with no fuss.

The whole initial process has taken much longer than what we expected. We approached the sales consultant in December 2012 now July 2013 and only now ready for council submission. We have decided to stick with them as we are not a first time builder and know exactly what we want, are very happy with the customer service and prompt communication provided by the sales consultant and are also quite impressed with the standard inclusions. We have been caught in the past by another builder where they promised the world but in the end our final contract price blew out on little things that were hidden and not included as standards.

However, if you do decided to go with them make sure you double even triple check your contract due to lack of attention to detail by the contracts administrator. So far this is what I can rate Homestead on, hopefully the rest of the process is much more speedier and hassle-free from here on as the sales consultant says that the initial process is the hard the hardest part.

After they get the deposit you don't exist for them – In the initial process the sales consultant was very helpful in redrawing the floor plan the way we want it and after a month we thought we got what we want. So we paid them the deposit and signed the initial quote to allow them to start the engineering drawings and soil test and they promised to get back to us in 3 weeks time with a fixed price… Read more

contract including the final footing cost. I mentioned to the consultant to ask the engineers to pay an attention to the retaining wall requirement as I saw many neighbours building next to us having to extend or do a second retaining walls. after 4 weeks we didn't hear from them so we start calling them and then they mentioned that they need a compaction certification from the developer or we will have 15k blow out in the footing cost and 3k in soil removal. so we did the run and got them the certificate and since they didn't mention the retaining wall I thought I would confirm with them that it doesn't need work, the answer came back that oh we didn't see that and we will need to get back to you... I told them I need final cost including footings and retaining walls which they promised to send within few days as we needed to submit the pack to the bank because at the time the 1st home owner grant was to expire by end of June. they came back to us saying the footings will cost 8k more and gave us a quote mentioning that (retaining walls done by the owner) I got very upset and called the sales manager and told him that I was waiting a fixed price contracts including the retaining wall quote and you come back to us saying retaining wall done by us , so he said I will get the retaining wall cost in 48 hours and will include it in the bank pack.

The week after the send us the contract mentioning 20 k estimate for retaining wall. I called him again asking what does he mean by an estimate? he said he just priced it based on their standerd rate per meter. I got angry again and asked why we were waiting all of this time just to get an estimate that he could have done over the phone so he promissed to get a quote from the company that does the retaining wall and off course he doesn't call back and when I followed up with him he says the retaining wall quote is now 28k , 8k more than they estimated but he needs sometime. this was 2 weeks ago and since then he is not replying our calls.

we decided to walk away from Homestead and finally could speak to the sales consultant and he asked to send the GM an email with our case and he will try to refund our deposit which we did yesterday and yet to hear back.

Walker the developer of blue stone estate were very helpfull and changed our block to nice flat one that doesn't need retaining walls hopefully and we are settling this friday and now we are again looking for a builder but it is so hard to trust any after this experience.

Extremely poor customer service and too many mistakes – The planning stage was good. The sales representative was helpful. After we signed the contract, however, they found few mistakes in it and we got penalized for it. Every time the plans and contract moved from one section to the other we received different variations increasing the total price considerably. Our paperwork was lost during the… Read more

selection process.

When we complained about all these problems, we did not receive any response from Homestead.

It appears that the company has a very poor internal communication system between different sections and not many people within Homestead seem to know what are they doing.

Definitely not recommend. Worst experience of our lives. One would expect much much more from a company that has been around for such a long time.

Will review again once the house is completed. So far not much, but the sales representative was helpful. Poor communication, except when is about paying the progress claims and signing the variations. Too many mistakes.

Total disappointment and verbal abuse from sales consultant – The sales consultant acts was a little toddler in house planning and do structural drawings. We had to bring our own drawing and give it to her to start from scratch. But very cosy and soft words initially with weird explanations for each mistakes. Finally after lot of hard talks for 4 weeks we got a little plan drawn. Funniest part is our… Read more

plan when drawn on her computer became Homestead's solely own plan. She don't hand over the plan to me or even to look at the dimension until we pay a deposit of $2000/-. As we were 1st time builder we didn't knew their tricks and traps. To get the plan and preliminary work, we paid the deposit and, saw that most of the things we told her were not on the plan,like kitchen cuboards,front elevation,windows placed at wrong spot,doors in the middle of the room, wasting space etc. Then comes the interesting part.

Got the money in their pocket and enjoyed that for another 4 weeks and as I didn't hear from them I rang and asked what's happening with the proceedings to council. A big sorry was the answer. Then we told her if they haven't done anything with the plan can we make some changes to the plan as we wanted some extra cupboards in kitchen and have a decent front elevation.Then she said I have to pay for to engineers to change plan in addition to the cost of the changes. I went to their office and said we definitely wanted to make changes regardless of the costs. Then she said the file is locked by administrator and cannot say a price for changes. I told her, how would you buy something without knowing price. If the sales person doesn't know the price of their product, what kind of strategy the company have. Just as she got a price from crystal ball, she said a change in window size cost $1200. I asked her is that a realistic price.

The she ran upstairs and asked with someone else and, came back and said, no it is $1900. One all other occasions during the process this same thing happened. I can't understand how would these kind of builders survive for such a long time in the business with these kind of fools in sales itself. We are not allowed to meet a drafts-man or any other people in the firm other than this sales girl. I was sure that she wanted us to push to the very end and trap us in the corner.

Finally we decided, we will be wasting our life long wages doing this ultimate poor building with homestead. So we told her we are not building with you any more. Being said that the sales lady got up from her chair, threw all the paperworks on table and screamed at us. We even didn't understand why she lost the temper.

So we defnitly decided we are not building,as we asked if we can get out $2000 deposit back as no work been done, because the soil testing and the contour plans were already done by us before starting with Homestead. Hearing this she got more violent and I thought I am in a Psychiatric ward with a mad women. Me, my partner and my little child of 3 year old were absolutely terrified by her sudden reaction. So we didn't had to think much about anything.

We decided even if we loose $2000, I am happy loose that than building with this mad people.

We decided to dispute with them.

I would recommend Homestead! – Sales Experience - excellent! friendly service and provided great ways to save money so we could spend it in the areas that mattered. We designed our house and pushed the boundaries, they helped us to achieve our goal. Build - it was built exactly when they said it would. Our site supervisor [name removed] is a legand! He made slight… Read more

improvements they we didn't realise would be a problem until the build started. Very flexible and took the time to explain everything.

Selections - the person we had was excellent, however she has since left. The only down side we had is that we have expensive taste and the base package wasn't what we were after. However, we requested all upgrades at the sales experience, therefore the upgrades were not a suprise. Someone I recommended has had a few problems with the person they have been using for their selections and the range has also since been improved from when I built a year ago.

Handover - having built before I know that you will always have a few things that need fixing, therefore expect it and you won't be disappointed (it's just part of the building process). The key is how they handle it. For each issue raised we had a response within a day and the items were fixed quickly and without fuss (unlike Rossdale Homes - who took longer and didn't return phone calls).

End result - exactly what we wanted, we love our house! Flexible, affordable, friendly, good quality Not a fixed contract, so ok for those who have built before as you know what to look for and ensure everything is included. This may catch out people who have not built before.

Bad – Even though my experience has not been ideal with Homestead, I would still recommend people to build with them... PROVIDED, that you list ALL of your specific requests in writing/email, record all conversations with consultants/building supervisers/admin staff in your diary. Ensure that you keep a paper trail of everything you want, regardless of… Read more

how insignificant or 'obvious' you may think they are - such as the height of power points, positions of towel rails/shower heads etc.

They seem to forget that some of their customers have NEVER built a home before and as such don't know how things work, or what is standard or expected. They build 300+ homes a year, so as far as i'm concerned, from a customer's perspective, they should be doing their best to ensure that EVERYTHING is discussed in detail.

* Sales customer service is outstanding

* Selections customer service is appauling

* Construction customer service seems to be quite good

* Materials & Trade Quality is very high grade

I am only giving Homestead SA 2 stars as a result of the 'negative' issues we've had to deal with - if it weren't for the selections problems we've endured I would have given them 4 to 5 stars. The salesman we dealt with was fantastic. He was more than helpful and ended up coming up with about 5 different designs until we got the one we were happy with. Their 'standard' range is equal to most other builder's 'premium' range, so the little extra you think you're paying isn't actually that much at all. Good workmanship - the level of tradesmen they use seems very good (we are close to completion on our house). HOMESTEAD caused the '90-day clause' in the contract to be exceded (this clause basically says that if for any reason "beyond their reasonable control" they can't start construction within 90 days of signing the contract then thay have the right to issue a 'variation' which is basically a bill for any increase in building costs - which they did, to the tune of over $5,000. The 90 days was exceded as a result of the selections staff's mistakes in pricing our selections - we went through 7 versions of the pricing until it was right, and this caused the delay. I sent email after email pointing out numerous and re-occuring mistakes in the selections pricing schedule, and was very surprised when I still received the +$5,000 variation - and even more suprised that if we didn't sign it and agree to pay the contract would be voided and we would lose our $3,000 deposit. They basically had us over a barrel and knew it, even saying that "no one would win if we went to court to argue what 'reasonable control' was or who's fault the delay was".

I'm not saying they intentionally exceeded the 90 days, but they certainly didn't do their best to ensure the 90-days wasn't exceeded as they knew they could profit significantly if they did. In justifying the charge, they said that their costs had risen significantly in the 3 months, yet when I have spoken to numerous tradies on our site (carpenters, tilers, electricians & brickies) they have ALL said that they haven't received a wage/contracted price increase from Homestead in years.

The other thing that we have since discovered is that the selections staff member (who has since left the company) did not record some of the specifics that we asked for, and as such we have been charged more or they simply haven't been included as we were told that these items "aren't in the contract".

The variations we have received have totalled over $8,000, some of which are justified as they are for issues that were not forseen, however 8K is still a big financial drain when you're spending over a quarter of a million dollars on building a house. These variations include things like "extra" costs for footings, electrical work, soil removal, and the 90-day item mentioned above. I would have much preferred a Fixed Price Contract that some of the other builders offer.

OK – If you do build with them, do not get them to build the kitchen or bullnose verandah. They have no idea regarding design, products or colours. We got the verandah built for a 1/3 of the price they were going to charge us. The initial contact with the sales person was fantastic, we basically had designed our own home and he twigged it to suit the… Read more

block etc. The building is of a high quality eg: brick work, foundations, walls, ceilings, tiler, windows etc The selection consultant, building supervisor and staff in the head office not very helpful. Do not get them to build the kitchen, took them 5 -6 times to get it right and then supplied a stone top with a seam in the middle of the bench. Building supervisor told us that how its supplied, which was not the case, they had built the breakfast bench too long. Eventually replaced. I found that the building supervisor was very casual about any concerns we had, never got back to us, my husband had to do the follow up with suppliers etc. I think they forgot we were spending over $200k with them.

Excellent – I highly recommend homestead to anyone who is looking at building! They can cater for almost any budget with house starting at around about $100k (villa type)with great family homes starting from about $150k and up! They may seem expensive but after you have upgraded everything else with other builders you may of well have gone to homestead and… Read more

had better quality overall and friendly staff! I would like to thank David Elliot for his hard work and his integrity! If you want quality and dont want to be stuffed around build with homestead! You won't regret it! Fantastic! We we first decided we were going to build we went around to display homes looking at what we could get for our money. One guy in Fairmont's basically said, " If you don't have a block, dont waste my time"! I was appauled! When we walked into Homestead's display we met David who was friendly as ever. When we were leaving we asked some questions and told him we didn't have a block. David was more than helpful and offered to help us find a block and a house to suit our needs and price range! When we found a block a few weeks later I gave the soil reports to David who worked out a budget of how much the house would roughly cost! This was done within 2 days!!! I think the reason why we have had a good experience so far was due to the consultant David Elliot! He is amazing and is always looking to benefit you! Not pushy at all and always welcomes your calls even if you do call him 5 times a day or at 10pm at night! We always thought Homestead were more expensive than other homes but when you add on the double garage (which is standard with most of homestead's homes) it works out to be the same price... except you dont have to upgrade to washable paint, ceramic/porcelian sinks, taps (the stands are good but we still upgraded as we wanted mixers), great and modern range of door handles (internal and external) insulation in the ceiling and external walls is standard, selections centre all at homestead except for the bricks and tiles, Panel lift door is standard... not Roller door! Also everything is A FIXED CONTRACT except for the footings! When we submitted our house to council they said that we needed to put a split in it... we thought this should have been picked up by homestead but in the end it worked out, we only had to drop the garage by 1 step and the family room and kitchen by 2 steps which gave us 3m high ceilings as a feature!

Trying to build with Homestaed – I have now been attempting to get Homestead to start constructing a house since January. The initial contact was extremely good, sadly at this stage I am only getting delays, no excuses given. Seriously considering ditching them. If they are as bad at the building stage as at the planning stage, this will turn in to a two year build. Initial contact promises the world. Time , now going for 5 months, not yet ready for council submission.