Would recommend – Overall, our experience with Stroud was very good, with only a small number of issues which were quickly resolved for the most part.

While Stroud has a wide variety of home designs, we knew early on that we would need a custom design to suit the layout of our acreage block. The staff at the display home were more than willing to visit the site with us to understand our vision for the property, and were happy to help us design a house from scratch. During the design phase, Stroud was patient with us as we changed our minds a number of times. To make this process easier and quicker for us, the draftsman even visited us at home to reduce the "back and forth" over e-mail and was open with his feedback and ideas.

As we had purchased our block of land at the height of the banking Royal Commission, there was a delay between first approaching Stroud for the design and being in a position to enter into a contract. Stroud was very accommodating and empathetic to our situation, and the contract process was managed well despite us requesting a number of unusual additions, like supplying some of our own fittings and excluding some standard items. Where we had complex needs like the design of the home network, the staff at Stroud would happily connect us with their suppliers directly to avoid any miscommunication. Although this process wasn't simple, by planning as much as possible up front we experienced a very smooth build with only a small number of variations and Stroud was usually flexible in this process. Outside of variations, our quote was complete and accurate and there were no rude surprises.

Despite our site supervisor changing part-way through the build, the transition was seamless from our perspective. We received an update every Friday and had a reliable way of keeping in touch if we needed to discuss anything. Although the build itself ran very smoothly, we feel that the new site supervisor lacked experience and attention to detail, and at times did not always think ahead or push hard enough to get the outcome we needed. Unfortunately, in a handful of instances it was necessary to insist or ask multiple times for something to be resolved.

The colour selection process was straightforward but the consultant did not really offer her expertise and it was up to us to choose what we wanted without really knowing anything about this area. It was hard to visualise how the house would look with all of our selections as there was no option for a virtual walkthrough. This led to some minor design flaws which were not realised until it was too late to change, for example an overhead cupboard in the butlers pantry not having enough clearance, and the powder room mirror being mounted too high. Arranging for the powder room mirror to be moved down was like herding cats, and is a good example of needing to push the site supervisor along. Ultimately this was resolved, but due to the layout of the butlers pantry, the only thing that can be done about the overhead cupboard is to remove it.

We encountered what we consider to be (only) two major issues during our build:

1. The tiles laid throughout the entire house did not match the specification noted in the contract by the supplier, National Tiles. This was not discovered until after the tiles had been laid. Ultimately, after escalating multiple times, we accepted compensation from Stroud even though the issue was with National Tiles. Although this was a negative experience that we believe could have been resolved much more quickly, we appreciated the gesture and customer service ultimately provided by Stroud.

2. From the beginning of our design, we had incorporated a pull-out rubbish bin under the kitchen sink. At the walkthrough following the kitchen fit-out, we noticed a half height bin had been installed instead of a full height one. Despite raising this numerous times and being assured that it would be resolved, it wasn't until practical completion that we were informed that nothing could be done to resolve. Had Stroud been honest about this from the beginning, we could have worked on a solution together. Our useless bin is still there :-(

The final inspection was carried out with an independent assessor who was impressed with the workmanship and identified a lower than average number of defects which have all since been resolved. Overall, we are impressed and very happy with the quality and design of our new home, and the relatively short build time considering its size and custom design. The bottom line is, if we ever decided to build again, we would consider Stroud a second time around.