Lifestyle Designer Homes

Misleading, deceptive, irresponsible, unprofessional – I am sharing the same bad experience as some of the owners here. My house was finished in June 2015, which was 2 months later than the contract date. But as the builder refused to repair some building defects and refused to put up all the appliances, my bank is refusing to send the inspector for final inspection. The builder has been holding the… Read more

key trying to force me to pay the last progressive payment. By today, it has been 5 months after the contract finishing date and I still haven't got the key. I am losing about $800 per week to pay the bank's interest. I have put a complaint to Department Fair Trading and ready to go to tribunal for a fight. I would like my review to be read by those potential clients so that they can avoid to suffer the same experience as I did.

Some brief summaries on my problems with the building:

1st: The building contract was very deceptive and the staff had misleading conduct:

(1) The tender didn't show any compensation for finishing the building later than the contract date. After I paid $6000 and just before signing the contract, I found out it is only $10 per day for late finishing. The staff told me that it was their STANDARD contract. I had no choice but to sign the contract as I was definitely not in a negotiation position after having paid the deposit.

(2) The builder kept telling me that they can finish my building by Christmas 2014 when I signed the contract back to Oct 2013. The building was supposed to finish on 1st April 2015, but didn't finish until late June. After I found out there were some building defects, I required the builder to do the repairing. However, they are only interested in getting the last payment from me. They hasn't done any repairing at all and refused the give me the key up till now. Now I am losing $800 per week for 5 months, which is about $17,320.

(3) When I signed up the contract, I was told there would be no more cost. Then I was asked to pay about $4000 earth work fee which was not disclosed to me at all. Again, I had no choice but to pay it.

(4) I didn't know that the contract didn't include stairs for both front and back door. Nobody mentioned that to me before I signed up the tender and paid the deposit. Again, I was not given any choice not to agree with the contract after having paid the deposit.

(5) After I applied for a construction loan, the bank's valuer told me that my contract was extremely unreasonable and unfair. I would have paid nearly all building cost when the house was only half finished. So the bank asked the builder to change their progressive payment schedule several times. The builder was quite reluctant to follow the bank's instruction for a long time and tried to play around with the schedule payment. Luckily, the bank was tough and eventually the builder had to amend their schedule. I was so lucky that the bank could help me to find out the trick hidden inside the contract payment.

(6) I also have several other disagreements with the builder, such as the builder refused to install a front balustrade which was totally part of the building but was not shown in the contract; I was charged more than $4600 for concrete footings for over 60 meters but the builder didn't inform me to go to the site when the job was done and refused to give me any paperwork to justify the payment, etc.

2nd: There are very limited free stuff under the standard inclusions and variations will cost you at least twice as much as you pay to other builders:

(1) Only after I signed the contract, I was told about what kind of stuff I can choose for my house. There were only 6 ugly bricks as free choice while other builders might have more 20 or 30 choices. Eventually, I chose a very normal brick by paying more than $4000. Same limitation applied to tiles, kitchen cupboards, stairs and even colors.

(2) It would be $110 by adding another TV point while it is only $45 with other builders.

(3) My land is only 398 square meters so everything in this house is in a small scale. I was asked to pay $4000 by just upgrading the mat surface of my small kitchen to be shining surface. After I made a big complaint, they reduced it to be $2500.

(4) As my house is in flooding zone with lots of moisture, my friend who knows about building adviced me to put compressed fiber floor in the wet areas to replace those yellow tongue floor. To be honest, if the builder told me that I could have different choices at the beginning, I would like to upgrade with much less cost . But they never discussed anything with me. I had to ask for the variation after the yellow tongue fibre floors were already installed. However, I was told by several people that it might be well below $15,000 for just replacing the floors in 3 bathrooms. But I was charged for more than $23,000!

So basically, when the building has begun, all variations will be double charged and you will have no choice but to be ripped off. Similar unreasonably high charges to all other stuff such as vanities, power points, plumber jobs, electrician jobs, carpenter jobs etc.

3rd: The building job was done with lots of delays, arguments, mistakes, irresponsibility, defects and denials.

(1) The biggest defects I found out is that there is a pond underneath my house. The site was over-excavated. (I guess that might because my contract didn't include earth work fee and I had to pay it myself.) The ground underneath the house is about 20cm lower than all its surrounding levels. When it rains, the water stuck under the house for days and days. I told the builder to solve the problem but they kept denying they made any mistakes. Eventually I had to pay an architect and a construction engineer to do reports showing all those defects. They finally agreed to repair the defects but required me to pay the last payment first. How ridiculous that is!

(2) The building reports showed brick cracks in 1st floor, mortar missing in nearly all external walls, paintings not done properly inside the house. I just don't feel the builder was using professional contractors for their jobs. So far, I can see nothing has been repaired yet.

(3) From the very moment I began to talk to the builder, I mentioned what kind of spa I would like for my ensuite. I gave them the spa's model number for a quote. They asked for $3700 but it would only cost me $2300 if I buy myself. So I decided to buy that myself. It is 1.5m corner spa in the tender. But the builder changed the spa size to be 1.3m in the contract without notifying me. Then when they tried to fit in the 1.5m spa, they had to squeeze the toilet into a small corner and change the square shower to be a corner shower. Also the double bowl vanity had to be put into the 2nd bathroom and a single bowel vanity was moved into the ensuite. So my house has a very strange structure that the double bowl vanity is not in the ensuite and the ensuite looks very tight. This would make the future selling pricing decreased.

(4) The two tiling companies of the builder are hopeless and deceptive.

Di Lorenzo is one company. They gave me a quote based on putting 600*600 floor tiles in bathroom. I was told by other people that this size of tiles is too big in bathroom for water flow. After I called Di Lorenzo, the same sales told me that they didn't have the matching floor tiles at the smaller size and asked me to choose different wall tiles. How could she just recommend the larger size without considering the future building problems? It is so irresponsible. Also this company charges extra money for installing any floor tiles larger than 200*200. They gave a ridiculous excuse by saying they put special underlay for larger tiles. However, I was told there is no need of any underlay for 300*300 or 450*450 tiles.

The other tile company is Beautiful Tiles. It is one of the most tricky business I have ever encountered. The owner is not someone you can trust. I went to his shop for 5 times from April 2014 till Jan 2015. He gave me several quotes and then the tax invoices showed different contents, such as secretly delete upstairs floor area or by putting the word "stick down" into the tax invoice although he promised to put underlay under the tiles. Eventually I decided only to do the bathrooms with them as the bathrooms are under the builder's warrantee not the tile company's warrantee. I guess my house shouldn't be delayed so long if the builder had a better tiling contractor.

So last, a simple suggestion, "If you don't want headache, arguments, frustration, sleepless nights, do NOT build with this builder."

Excellent company – I can not fault lifestyle designer homes. They built my house and I found them to be very honest and good to deal with. My tender was very long and detailed and everything was explained to me before I signed. I shopped around before I signed and other builders just wanted me to have there design without thinking about my land issues. the… Read more

design was changed to reduce building cost as I had a sewer on part of my land. I really appreciated the way they explained what was involved to get around the problem. The design was changed but the end result was good.

My house is a custom design and I am very happy with the high quality finishes and they help with all the tiles and finishes that no other builder provides.

I had to call them to check the drain and the owner of the company came himself to have a look and he arranged to fix the problem within 2 weeks.

I will build another house in future and will ask Lifestyle to build for me again as they have good knowledge about building luxury houses and my experience with them was good.

Completely unsatisfactory service – I couldn't express enough how disappointed we were with the service and workmanship of Lifestyle Designer Homes. Since moving into our home we have had a number of friends and future neighbours ask us "Who did you build with". Our response is always the same "DO NOT BUILD WITH OUR BUILDER!". In the initial stages of designing the house we… Read more

were very pleased with the outcome. The design which was presented was beyond our expectations. We provided Lifestyle Designer homes with our budget and their task was to design a home and stick within this budget. We were extremely clear that the budget was fixed as we are a young family and do not wish to over extend ourselves.

The house was designed and tender put together. Given we are a young couple with no experience I believe we were taken for a complete ride. The tender was missing vital information which we weren't aware of and was later added as a "variation". These variations just kept on coming. Thousands after thousands were lost in "variation" costs.

The keys were handed over just 6-months after the build commenced. However, not without drama. The house wasn't finished however, Lifestyle took advantage of the fact that we were basically homeless and desperate and forced us to pay the remainder of the money on the agreement that the house would be finished over time.

Against the advice of others we stupidly did this and have regretted it ever since. Getting people back to finish vital parts of the house has been like pulling teeth.

We have now been living in an unfinished house for 7-months with no end date in site.

All of the main cosmetic things have now been completed, however, still major structural features as well as an occupancy certificate have not been issued.

We have contacted the DOFT and opened a complaint against this company.

Do NOT make the mistake we did.

terrible service, expensive, unfinished work

Lifestyle Designer Homes Appalling – We engaged Lifestyle Designer Homes (LDH) to undertake a knock down rebuild in Concord West. In summary we found them appalling. They had no attention to detail, the plans were 2D black and white drawings rather than color and lacked detail. The tender document was vague and in some instances specified no part numbers or vendors for some upgrades.… Read more

In addition they didn't take us through important items such as the on site detention tank and explain why they implemented an ugly above ground tank when there were other alternatives.

Despite the fact we spent $200K on upgrades to improve their low quality fixtures and fittings (despite the fact we purchased the platinum package), they didn't seem to understand we wanted a high quality build and were happy to pay for high quality work.

Obtaining variations was like pulling teeth. Most project builders can tell you the cost of a Caesarstone upgrade in a heartbeat. These guys needed to get it quoted as a separate item taking days. This also applied to most of the other 30 variations in the tender.

When the build was nearing completion, there were two Provisional Items (do and charge) in the build which were the on site detention tank and stormwater implementation. Despite the fact these items were completed months before handover, they kept coming up with excuses why they couldn't advise the final cost until virtually handover. We believe they did this to hit us with the cost at handover and give us little time to argue it knowing handover would be held up. When they did give is the final invoice it was littered with accidental overcharging most of which was reversed after we raised the issues with them.

The build also finished 1 month after the revised contract end date. All in all it took 13 months to complete. Part of the issue was the fact trades came on site to work for a few hours and then left. A full day's work seemed impossible.

We've now moved into our house 15 months ago and the ensuite has leaked into the laundry below and the bathtub has leaked into the study below on two occasions. It's been over 3 months since we raised the ensuite issue with hem and it's still not rectified and we can't use it. The bath tub leak occurred two months ago and it's also not completed.

We raised the 13 week defect issues inside the required time (which they acknowledged), and 80% of those have not been rectified 12 months after raising them despite the fact DOFT has met on site with them and issued rectification orders last week.

Let me make it clear we paid all invoices virtually on time and in full, including the final one (one or two were a week late but that's about it).

There are many more issues and in the coming months we will be raising them on this forum.

In summary - stay away from them. Flexibility to change aspects of the build, style of home. Bad warranty service, no attention to detail, inadequate plans and documentation

Lifestyle Designer Homes fulfilled our dreams – We really appreciate Lifestyle Designer Homes who built our house and fulfilled our dreams. You designed our house exactly as what we wanted. We are 100% happy! The building materials, quality of the workmanship, and the customer service are all excellent! We would love to say thank you! We definitely will recommend all our families and friends to build the house with your company! custom design

Our Saviours! – We were one of the un-lucky people that got caught up in the Cosmopolitan Homes Collapse, as we shopped around for a new builder we found that since we were allowed to keep our existing plans, which were already DA Approved most other larger companies were trying to push us towards changing to their design or whacking a huge cost on top of what we… Read more

would have paid to Cosmo. We found [name removed] at Lifestyle who seem to be better equipped to do custom design homes they were happy to honor the existing Cosmo contract. The best part for us was we were able to add a number of small alterations and fix the things we didn’t like about the Cosmo plan, we did ask for some variations and despite the horror stories we were told regarding variations and other builders, with Lifestyle we found they were pretty reasonable.

The main thing for me was how they responded when there were issues, and they did come up from time to time especially since I had one builder working off the design and contract from another builder, they were always available to discuss things and were fair and honored all their obligations without any fuss even when they hadn’t cost them in.

The owners were very hands on and made themselves available to us whenever we wanted, the service was fantastic, (unlike when I was trying to get through to someone at Cosmo and calls never got returned and the people changed on what seemed to be a monthly basis). I was in constant contact with the owners and the site managers on their direct mobiles which they always answered.

Since I was building in Pemulwuy where there had been many

Cosmo houses and having the whole neighborhood being built by various other builders we were able to talk to a lot of neighbors who told us about nightmares they had about building and their builders. We didn’t have the huge surprise costs that jumped out of nowhere, and we could even visually see the difference in the quality of work and materials that were used on our house compared to a number of other houses. In fact the inclusions they gave us were often better than that of what Cosmo had included.

I received my keys last Friday and for a while there I didn’t think they wouldn’t finish in time for handover but they made it with extremely pleasing results. Despite the initial drama with Cosmo I was happy to be building and would definitely build again especially now that I know the biggest difference in your building experience is the builder you choose. Great Service, Helpful, Fair and Honest (rare quality in builders) Occasional issues mainly due to taking over another builders contract and plan. Some of the contractors were a bit unreliable but they were all sorted out by the construction managers in the end.