Hi all, Has anyone in Christchurch has any experience with Today Homes

Hi Sophie Today Homes are a reputable housing company who have been in the industry for decades. The most important thing for you is to have a detailed specification which specifies the exact models of items, square metre rates on tiles, carpet quality which you can check from their supplier at Carpet Plus etc Also just as important is looking at their provisional costings allowed that they reflect the quality you intend to purchase.Housing Companies are renowned for having low provisional costings, then you sign an contract, go on to select your product and you get increased costs. This can take a little work but if for instance the have an allowance of $15K for the kitchen, find out who their supplier is and go and see what you will be getting. The only real way you find out what your finished square metre rate is working with an experienced sales person who will work with you to create your own specification like we do and then supply you a true estimate of finished cost and then working towards a fixed price contract before you commit. Hope that helps a little Peter Quinn Quinn Homes

Hi Sophie, I’ve seen the reply to your post from Peter Quinn. I have no reason to doubt what he says about Today Homes (long standing, reputable etc), and from other comments I’ve seen on this blog I get the impression Peter is as honest and straightforward as any builder can afford to be, and the advice in his first two paragraphs is excellent. Although you can try clicking ctrl F, and putting ‘Today’ and ‘Quinn’ in the search box to check through all the entries and form your own impression. In my opinion the reluctance of Today to give details of what their spec means is a big red flag. You need at least the kind of detail Peter is suggesting. If they refuse to give it (in writing in the Contract) then I advise you to walk away. Regarding Peter’s third paragraph, this sounds excellent in principle. My only caution would be that (especially for someone inexperienced in house building) very often ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’. By which I mean you can easily get tied up with superficial things like carpet, tiles etc, but not realise there are literally hundreds of things in a house, which affect the overall quality of the final build, but which you don’t even know you need to specify. Last comment is that in my opinion before you hand over any money at all you should make sure that you are happy with the proposed building contract. Of course I assume the detailed Specification mentioned above would form part of that, but first you need to make sure that the basic framework of the contract is fair, and contains all the provisions it should.

Have you used Today Homes? we are looking to build our home too. their pricing compare with the other chch based company is much lower (exactly same design ) . but seems their reputation is not too bad but just don’t want to end up a huge bill if we decide to use them

Hi Chris Respect your comments however my intent to focus on a couple of products in the 5 minutes I had this morning to make comment should be read as an over aching comment of caveat emptor ‘Let the Buyer Beware’ Do your homework and ensure you are being advised by a sales professional who has the technical knowledge to advise you correctly. Most don’t and through the sales persons lack of knowledge, land unsuspecting clients into cost over runs throughout construction with unrealistic PC Sums and not having the knowledge to create a specification that reflects the clients expectations in the first instance .

Hi Lydia, If you click ctrl F, and enter Today in the search box, you will find many comments on this company.

Hi Peter, Totally agree with what you say. I’ve only had one house built in NZ, and in the end it turned out fine (and actually very well built), despite the builder going into liquidation just before handover. Because he had good guys on site, I had a fairly tight contract and had a good control on the stage payments. So I didn’t end up much out of pocket. But still a hassle trying to get the subbies organised to come back. Because it seems with the very clumsy system of requiring ‘producer statements’ etc you are virtually forced to use the the same people. As just one example, how do you get the old sparkie to sign off on half the electrics, and a new one to sign off on the rest. The whole system of building needs a thorough review to safeguard people who have houses built. So although I have spent my whole career writing contracts and supervising major construction projects, I would never stick my toe in the murky shark infested waters of NZ house building again. It makes me feel sorry, and very nervous, for a lot of the apparently very inexperienced people who write on this blog. As I said before, many of them obviously ‘don’t know what they don’t know’. Whether they end up with a decent, honest and capable builder (like yourself no doubt) often seems to be more luck than judgement.

To say you have lost faith in the industry is a bit harsh. There are very good operators in the industry. Its the transparancy that is the problem. We set out to change that in our business making sure our clients are protected every step of the way. We dont take an money what so ever off clients until the floor is down and subsequently at every 5 stage payment throughout the build so the client is always in credit eg they are only paying for what has been completed onsite. I dont know any other company that offers that but its important to us that our clients feel safe. In your case where your builder went into liquidation, if that happened to us (which it never will) you would have been protected and your comment around changing a trade at half way, its taken me over 12 years to get the team we have for this not to happen and its been a struggle. But I still say, its the clients that need to spend more time on selecting builders that have the knowledge to sit down with them at the very start of the process and go through every specification of the home to fully understand what the clients expectations are and to cost or estimate accordingly That is where the trouble happens before the build has even started.

Hi Peter, I’ll try to make this my last response. But just a couple of points in case anyone reading our exchange may have misunderstood. Of course I realise there are some (possibly many) good builders around. If not then I guess the industry would be such a disaster that the government would have been forced to tighten things up by now. But just a quick skim through this blog (plus my own experience) tells me there are far too many bad, or possibly just incompetent, ones around. And it’s often very difficult for people with little experience in building to recognise the difference. Because most of them have sales type people up front, who talk a good game, and say lots of reassuring things. Otherwise they would never get any business. I assume you must have more liquidity than a lot of builders, if you can afford to complete substantial amounts of work before payment. But most of them want money up front to fund future work. And it shocks me how many people seem to hand over substantial deposits based on just simple concept plans, a very biased contract and a very sketchy specification, plus lots of promises. This makes them very vulnerable to a bad builder. I note that you don’t expect to go into liquidation, and I sincerely hope you’re right. But of course in the worst case scenario that situation often goes together with workers and subbies who have not been paid. Because lack of money to pay those people is what causes the collapse of the company. So clients would still be left scrambling to find out who they are, who has been paid what, and negotiating to get them to come in and complete part-finished work, or hand over certs and producer statements, in order to get a Code Compliance Cert. This is the reality of being unlucky enough to choose the wrong builder.