Incredible Building Experience 5 Stars - Brisbane North – Firstly, I apologise for the length of this review, however I have tried to be as comprehensive as possible so as to give the review they deserve and that others can use.

My wife and I were first home owners and we started building in North Brisbane with the North Stroud Homes Office in late 2016 following a land purchase in March of the same year. Due to the unique design of our block (side and backward sloping corner block) and the accompanying easements and setback requirements, we quickly realised that we would need to create a custom designed house specifically for the block. As we didn't have the money to pursue a private builder, we narrowed down our decision to either Stroud Homes or the other big name (Valeco). We received quotes from both companies, and despite being very similar in price we decided to go with Stroud Homes for several reasons, with the primary reason being their customer service, level of inclusions and build guarantees.

SALES/DESIGN PROCESS: We dealt with Kyle for the majority of the entire process, with him being the brother of the business owner. I honestly have no words to describe how excellent this experience was as he was always polite and happy to help regardless of how many or how stupid my questions were. I honestly was texting or calling the poor bloke at 9pm sometimes and he was always happy to answer and give me an honest response.

For the design itself, I took one of their standard 2 storey designs, and completely stripped out the downstairs and redesigned it to fit what I needed and kept the upstairs mostly the same. Throughout this entire process, Kyle would happily work with me while I made constant changes to the plans. Having the freedom to create a custom design without worrying about being charged a fortune for any changes like most companies was extremely refreshing and liberating. We were able to create a unique design that perfectly fit our lifestyle and land without paying anything extra. We consistently get compliments from people saying they think our house is the nicest looking in the street, but we wouldn't have been able to achieve this without Kyle working as tirelessly as he did to ensure that everything was perfect. The only thing that let the process down was the time it took their draftsman to apply the changes I made and send the plans back however I am not the most patient individual and probably don't understand the level of work required. One of the things that we mostly appreciated was that their show homes weren't designed to draw you in with flashy finishings and then you later find out that it costs twice as much to have them as the price you were quoted. With Stroud Homes, literally what we saw in the show homes was what we got in our standard finishes.

Further to this, we decided to install downlights throughout the house, however I really wanted to source my own lights instead of going with the builder selection. Stroud refunded me the cost to install all of their lights and then allowed me to purchase all internal lights privately and simply charged me a small fee to install them for me which was more then reasonable. The same went for some special tiles we wanted laid, they were happy to credit us their tiles and simply charge a small fee to lay them. It was small touches like this that really helped them stand out and made the process as enjoyable as possible. We had heard that with a lot of builders, you get the basic electrical plan and then they charge a fortune to add anything on, however we were happy to find that Stroud offered a comprehensive electrical quota and were very reasonable with pricing for additional extras.

We really did find that having the inclusions as the same level as the display homes helped us to actually visualise what it would look like when we did made upgrades on some items. Because the standard was already so high, there were very few things that we wanted to upgrade and when we did, it really showed and we can appreciate them instead of the entire house needing an upgrade due to a poor baseline level of inclusions.

Because of their transparency with their pricing and inclusions, it did make it a little hard for us to justify putting in a ducted air conditioning system simply because their price seemed so much more expensive then other builders who always offer those cheap deals for upgrades, however those deals aren't actually a fair representation of the cost of the air-conditioning because they have already factored the cost into your quote regardless of whether you actually choose to go with it or not. With Stroud, because they make it simple and don't try to lure people in with fake deals and instead allow their product to speak for itself, the big ticket item of air-conditioning felt expensive however in reality was a very fair price and we are so thankful we got it as I cannot live without it.

BUILDING PROCESS: The building process went well for the most part, although it was complicated at times by the weather and site works. We had some minor communication issues with the site supervisor throughout the build due to some personality conflicts, however he no longer works for Stroud and the new site supervisor is a delight to communicate with. I was able to stop past the site regularly and have periodic walk throughs where all my questions were answered and any issues rectified.

We have heard all the horror stories about builders before, one of those stories even happened to someone else building on our street, so I had never imagined I would consider a builder to be honest and trustworthy, but that is exactly what the owner Jace is. During our quoting process, they came out to look at the site and advised us we would need a small retaining wall so we had it included in the quote. Once the build started and they began the earthworks, they found that the site was sloping considerably more then they had estimated and realised that we would actually need a much larger (and therefore considerably more expensive) retaining wall. What shocked us was that Jace approached us and said that he believed it was something that could have been foreseen and therefore he considered it their problem, so he footed the bill for the retaining wall and the backfill we needed, which would have cost us approximately an additional 20K. To this day I still can't believe that he did that and acted with such integrity and readily took ownership of the issue. I've never in my life heard of a builder doing that, and even if it were for nothing else, that act alone would ensure we recommended them and used them again for any builds we do in the future.

FINISH QUALITY: In terms of quality, we were extremely happy with nearly every aspect of our home. My dad being an ex-builder had a look through and said it was done to an extremely high standard and couldn't fault anything. There were minor issues we picked up over the next 12 months however there were no major problems and we were able to submit a very small defect list at the 12 month mark a few weeks ago. The new site supervisor was very quick to jump on top of the list and everything is currently being fixed. The only defects we had were some small cracks in cornices from the house settling on the building pad due to the substantial fill we needed and some minor paint touchups.

We did have an issue with the borders around the windows at one point as it was something I had been discussing with the previous site supervisor and it had never been rectified. However, about 6 months later when I contacted Stroud North, the owner personally came out to have a look and agreed that he wasn't satisfied with it either and then arranged for it to be repaired at no cost. He apologised and said that he had actually instructed the previous site supervisor to address the issue months ago, however due to some communication problems, it had never been taken care of. Thankfully, they did a tremendous job and I am now very satisfied.

Again I apologise if it's a little long, but I really do feel like these guys deserve a detailed review, simply because they gave us an amazing experience building our first house, and I still hear horrible stories from so many people and I'm just so thankful that we aren't one of them. Jace has said to me on multiple occasions that he wants to be in the building industry for the rest of his life and he takes pride in his reputation as a builder. He is certainly right to do so, and if the rest of the industry was like him then it would be a marvel. I have no doubt that Stroud North will continue to prosper simply because of the way they approach business on a personal level. They actually care about you as customers and they consistently deliver a quality product. We recommended Stroud to other people on our street and now have two other houses built by them next to us, and their level of standard hasn't dropped at all.

(On a side note, Valeco homes started building a house on our street around the same time that ours was started and it still isn't finished over a year later! We are so happy we made the right choice out of the two!)

In summary, I recommend these guys as THE people to build with if you want a stress free build and a beautiful house. I constantly recommend them to friends and people who are considering building and if you choose to go with them you will not be disappointed!! Would give 6 stars if possible.