Hi everyone,
I have been with this forum for a while but this is the first time I post. Can someone please help me with my problem below?
We paid the remaining of the deposit to a total of $4000 to Clarendon Homes (in Sydney) back in May 2009 for a knockdown and rebuild on one of our IPs. We plan to live in that house when it has been completed. This is our first time building a house.
We signed a "Deposit Tender" in June. After that, during the external color selection phase, we discoverred some flaws with the designs and requested changes via emails and phone calls. We were aware and fine with the fact that changes after this stage would incur some cost for redrawing etc...
The process from this point was painful as Clarendon had not been as responsive as the period before we signed the Tender. The feeling has been they tried to talk us out of the any further changes from this point. Some changes were critical i.e. we had an extra car space next to the garage and the driveway was drawn in a way that it would be almost impossible to park a car in the extra car space or the garage on the other end...
The suboptimal design, the lack of responses and many bad reviews we have read about Clarendon Homes prompted us to cancel.
We sent an email to cancel in August. At this stage, Clarendon was waiting for us to select the external colors, so the plan has not been finalised and submitted to Council yet.
We were prepared to loose $4000 as we figured out it would be more important to have a good design and loose $4000 now rather than sorry later as we will have to live in it for a long time.
We did not expect that Clarendon Homes sent us an invoice asking us to pay an extra $2199.26 to cover their cost to this point.
The invoice lists the following items:
Surveyor: 1565.30
Energy Assessment: 330.00
Engineer: 1441.00
Water Authority: 273.46
Private Certifier: 544.50
Stormwater Consultant: 605.00
Administration Fee: 1000
Total: 6199.26
Paid: 4000
Invoice Amount: $2199.26 to be paid to Clarendon Homes.
My question is is it fair and legal that Clarendon can demand this amount of money on top of the deposit of $4000? Do the list of items they had spend my money on look reasonable? There were no real invoices, they just typed up a list with the amounts and the list looks exactly as I have pasted it above.
We have lost $4000 and a lot of time. Clarendon too but $4000 deposit should legally cover this cost? That was legally, morally, I beleive the $4000 has not been spent as it is meant to cover council submission to approval but the plan has not been submitted so Clarendon should respect consumer's choice not to choose them and refund us back the unused money.
Has anyone gone through the same thing before and can give me some advises. Is what Clarendon Homes demanding correct?
P.S we are now looking at building with another builder (paid another $4000 with this builder) and I did tell Clarendon about this.
Regards
I have been with this forum for a while but this is the first time I post. Can someone please help me with my problem below?
We paid the remaining of the deposit to a total of $4000 to Clarendon Homes (in Sydney) back in May 2009 for a knockdown and rebuild on one of our IPs. We plan to live in that house when it has been completed. This is our first time building a house.
We signed a "Deposit Tender" in June. After that, during the external color selection phase, we discoverred some flaws with the designs and requested changes via emails and phone calls. We were aware and fine with the fact that changes after this stage would incur some cost for redrawing etc...
The process from this point was painful as Clarendon had not been as responsive as the period before we signed the Tender. The feeling has been they tried to talk us out of the any further changes from this point. Some changes were critical i.e. we had an extra car space next to the garage and the driveway was drawn in a way that it would be almost impossible to park a car in the extra car space or the garage on the other end...
The suboptimal design, the lack of responses and many bad reviews we have read about Clarendon Homes prompted us to cancel.
We sent an email to cancel in August. At this stage, Clarendon was waiting for us to select the external colors, so the plan has not been finalised and submitted to Council yet.
We were prepared to loose $4000 as we figured out it would be more important to have a good design and loose $4000 now rather than sorry later as we will have to live in it for a long time.
We did not expect that Clarendon Homes sent us an invoice asking us to pay an extra $2199.26 to cover their cost to this point.
The invoice lists the following items:
Surveyor: 1565.30
Energy Assessment: 330.00
Engineer: 1441.00
Water Authority: 273.46
Private Certifier: 544.50
Stormwater Consultant: 605.00
Administration Fee: 1000
Total: 6199.26
Paid: 4000
Invoice Amount: $2199.26 to be paid to Clarendon Homes.
My question is is it fair and legal that Clarendon can demand this amount of money on top of the deposit of $4000? Do the list of items they had spend my money on look reasonable? There were no real invoices, they just typed up a list with the amounts and the list looks exactly as I have pasted it above.
We have lost $4000 and a lot of time. Clarendon too but $4000 deposit should legally cover this cost? That was legally, morally, I beleive the $4000 has not been spent as it is meant to cover council submission to approval but the plan has not been submitted so Clarendon should respect consumer's choice not to choose them and refund us back the unused money.
Has anyone gone through the same thing before and can give me some advises. Is what Clarendon Homes demanding correct?
P.S we are now looking at building with another builder (paid another $4000 with this builder) and I did tell Clarendon about this.
Regards