Beachwood made a complicated process straightforward for happy first-time home (re)builders – We elected to knock down and rebuild our very original late 70s family home mainly due to an inability to easily find housing stock to suit our requirements, and we wanted to avoid stamp duty expenses.

We chose Beachwood after following an obscure work mate to footy mate sales connection and instantly found a range of facades and house designs that were actually attractive and incorporated a large range of inclusions (Ascend range).

From first having a look at the "Lorne 34" display home to moving into our new home (2021 era Lorne 38) was a 34 month process. Our initial interest culminated in finalising a sales contract around 10 months later (at the start of 2022), waiting for building approval (with a report and consent process that had to be approved by our LGA) (June 2022), demolishing the existing house (using a third party in Sept 2022) and then, finally, site preparation and construction with Beachwood commencing from Dec 2022. We had good experiences during this initial process, with just a small delay in preparing for contract signing due to changing resources at the Beachwood head office. The sales consultant, colour consultant (appointment done remotely during lockdown!), and the tender review consultant were all very experienced and able to make the process straight-forward. We largely copied the colours and design of the display home, with some very minor floor plan alterations.

I made a number of post-contract variations - some triggered by the Beachwood - such as resolving conflicts in roof space for heating/cooling zoning, and some triggered by us (such as introducing some electrical upgrades to be more future proofed). In each case, these changes were straight forward and Beachwood was fair and reasonable when charging for administering these changes.

I kept a fair bit of documentation of variations over time, and this was useful, as there were a couple of times I was required to point our where plans had regressed, or some things in the contract hadn't been reflected in the plans. But otherwise I felt this was mostly very accurate.

In hindsight, I think I could probably have trusted the process more, leaving Beachwood to deliver on their promise, and not have followed up to clarify so many things. The team was quite patient with me.

I felt quite a lot of trepidation during the building process as mainstream volume builders like Porter Davis were running into issues and going into liquidation. Beachwood assured us in writing that they had not taken on more than they could deliver on, and were not highly exposed to inflationary cost pressures. It was impossible to verify this - but it was clear thorough the building process that they were not gouging me, as they resolved a number of minor inclusions in my favour without dispute. We had a few items that had provisional allowances set aside and for these items we did not see any contractor invoices as these were of course held back due to being commercially in confidence. Nevertheless Beachwood did find savings for some of these allowances and did not charge the full provisional sum except for the electrical pit (likely very accurately costed) and the footpath / crossover remediation (was not accurate and cost a little over the provision).

Beachwood handed over the house 2 months after their original estimates, and these delays was put down to labour shortages (this was just following the peak of the construction boom). It was clear halfway through the project that timing was going to be an issue - and a new site manager was appointed to take the workload of another Beachwood employee. He did a very effective job and finishing the site pre-Christmas. There no material defects that were noted in the condition report, and most of these remaining items were finished off within 8 weeks of handover (items such as two dented frames of double glazed windows were fixed without discussion by Beachwood).

In our case the included "bonus" was an appliance pack (oven, fridge, rangehood, dishwasher, washer, dryer) which was all pre-installed and did help the house feel very "complete" during handover. These were Fisher and Paykel appliances and appear to be reliable products.

The After Care team delivered on the 90 day maintenance issues and resolved all issues noted, including refinishing a nib wall that was out of square, which hadn't been picked up during handover.

Things that Beachwood explicitly did not want to include in the contract included decking and concreting. I used third parties to complete these items after handover, and this was a little nerve wracking as I had more confidence in Beachwood having the insurances, qualifications and scale than some of the small builders / concreters I engaged for this other work. I would consider pushing Beachwood next time to include this as part of the build so as to eliminate this and speed up the completion of things I had to sort out. I told they did not include services where they had trouble resourcing uncertified trades such as concreting.

All in all a great outcome, and while I might not feel "excited" to do this again (no plans to repeat!) I was certainly NOT scared off by the experience and have recommended Beachwood to others seeking to do the same as what we did.