So you are already in the booming Sydney property market, but decide that the time is right to move on up in the world and invest in a bigger house.

All good.

You decide to buy a new house, not yet finished by a builder seen as a ‘premium’ provider.
Still all good, right?
Wrong.

Despite my family having owned 3 or 4 houses from this builder, and despite us paying a premium price for our new house, we have problems a plenty. No matter what you do, sometimes you cant find all the issues with a house till long after you have moved in, but in our case we identified MOST of the issues before the house was finished and before we had settled.

Asquith Homes was our choice of builder. Also has ties to Beechworth, or XXXXXX homes. We knew of the quality of their homes due to past experience and were impressed by their premium standing and good design, however what we didnt bank on was George’s absolute lack of customer service, lack of empathy and bluntly, total lack of anything vaguly resembling a brain.

Maybe 10% of the items identified pre-settlement were rectified. At this time our biggest issue was the finish to the ensuite bathroom mirror. Unbeleivably they had a row of cut tiles that butted into the bottom of the mirror with no grout or finishing at all.

This was raised about 4 times and they tried to make it look more acceptable without doing the one thing that they should have….. actually just fix it properly. The other bathrooms are all finished off magnificantly, as they should be, yet the one bathroom that we are in every single day has a very shoddy finish.

Anyway, settlement went through because we were told that all of our issues with the house would be rectified to our satisfaction via the ‘Maintenance Agreement’. Our real estate agent and the site foreman instructed us to write down anything that we werent happy with and they would fix them up after the 3 month maintenance agreement time.

We did this.

Diligently writing down everything and we submitted it to ‘George’ when were told to. Image my surprise when George replied to our maintenance request, in writing no less, detailing that although we didnt have any maintenance agreement on this house they would fix SOME of the issues as identified.

Now what was running the partial brain matter that George employs I do not know, but somehow he managed to infer that of the 3 houses they they have built in the same street, 2 have waranties, yet ours does not. Now I am not talking about picky little things either, I am talking about ‘you should have known better’ kind of things.

Here is an idea of the quality of Asquith Homes quality control.

* 12 broken roof tiles culminating in a leak that left a 6m x 1m puddle a centimeter deep that tripped the power and left a wall and carpet in a bedroom soaked, whilst soaking some furniture to the point of mould growth.
* Splitting and cracked cornices
* Splits and cracks in the gyprock walls at seemingly random locations
* Internal doors with only a single coat of paint that clearly has writing showing through
* Blocked stormwater drain
* Blocked drain in laundry tub preventing washing machine from emptying
* Power points with broken switches
* Sensor light not working at all
* Badly fitted sliding doors (virtually no fixing methods) and on and on.

Some things you get worn down over time to just accepting, although with great resentment.
Things like really bad quality on plastering or cornices, but there is no excuse for cracking woodwork anywhere, skirting boards cracking on the joins, and just about every piece of timber that touches tiles or gyprock or another piece of timber to be cracking and lifting.

Probably the biggest quality control item that Asquith Homes should be addresses with their subcontractors is that the painters have not painted ANY piece of timber that cant be seen from a standing position.
This means EVERY piece of architrave that you either have to duck down or climb up to see that surface pointing away from you, is RAW timber. NOT EVEN PRIMED timberm totally RAW timber.

That is disgusting in my book, totally lazy. We had to ask for the blocked drain in the laundry to be fixed for 5 months before something was done about it, and the plumbers had to dig up the concrete path to clear the blockage that was a lump of concrete in the pipe.

Sharon was told 3 or 4 times that the laundry trough not draining was normal and the fact that whenever the washing machine emptied that the water would half fill the trough was the fault of the washing machine pumping too vigurously.

It was her determination and the fact that the washing machine was beginning to refuse to function that got that one fixed.

The Emmy award winning performance for a moron goes to George for his answer in relation to Asquith Homes mistake with the front windows.
You see, for some reason, Asquith decided that the windows upstairs should be tinted whilst the windows downstairs should not. All good so far, except for the fact that in their rabid quest for the WORST quality control that they could muster, they managed to put one tinded window downstairs and one non tinted upstairs.

No big deal I hear you say, how about the fact that that mens that 3 windows next to each other downstairs has one tinted and two untinted, and upstairs 3 windows next to each other has two windows tinted and one untinted? So, Georges answer to the problem when first raised?

“Tinted windows are palced to the front elevation at our discretion at the time of construction and comply with “Basix” requirements.” – George Kristen – Construction Manager

Hmm I dont think he understands do you? So he came out to look at their glaring mistake and his answer this time?

You bought the house so you accept the way that we did the windows

Ahh , no George, better start to use the other 95% of your brain that you have omitted to use.
I bought the house that you built before you finished it, and trusted that you would actually build it properly.

Things like tinted windows can be hard to tell before they have blinds behind them and even then you have to stant out the front of the house and stare at them. We only found the mistake when we put fly screens on and the installer said something.

That one is still being contested, I will have to update this blog with further pearls of wisdom from George on that.

Anyway, the whole experience has rulled out any of the Asquith Homes branded houses for us. No Asquith, Beechwood or XXXXX will ever be our home after this one. Looks like I am finding a new premium builder.