Hey, anyone has experience working with JnJ or Ultimate Builders in Christchurch

Interested in knowing this as well. I assume “you get what you pay for applies”, but the JNJ adverts on trademe are always so tempting when they are 50k under similar houses from other builders.

Good old marketing, works like a pretty flower to a bee. They can say they’re half the price of any builder/franchise builder in NZ but their contract will have half a dozen clauses in it where they can extract money from you and if you sign it it will be legal theft too. Their sales team will hook you in and tell you everything you want to hear and they’ll be your best friends too! They’ll get you to spend a few grand for drawings or a few more for an engineer or architect and blatantly lie to your face by telling you that your dream home is within your budget. Absolutely! Sooner or later you might guess that something isn’t quite right, they’re not returning your calls with the speed they did before but you’re already financially invested and to walk away now you’ll lose maybe 5-7k so you stick with them and hope for the best. Here’s my deposit! Fingers crossed! Now you’re stuffed. They have a huge chunk of your money, they have no intention of delivering your home within the budget you have and you will be held to ransom till the bitter end no matter the cost. If you thought losing 5-7k was bad you’ll most likely end up going over budget by tens of thousands instead. It’s all in the contract. Get it in the first instance and instead of throwing money away on drawings and other stuff that’s not even needed at this stage, throw it at a lawyer who deals with renovations and new builds. Best money you’ll ever spend on a build I guarantee it. If the sales team won’t give you a contract or try to deflect or minimise the importance of it then bloody hell please walk away. I really should just cut and paste this instead of giving myself RSI. You too Chris C! You have far more patience than I do! P.S – I’m a woman who is not past 50 but has more insight into the building industry than I care to. Once you see a con you can’t un-see it unfortunately and I’ll never build again.

Hi MJ, I can tell your patience is wearing thin. Anyone who reads that should get the point! But the question is will they listen to you, or the snake oil salesperson in the show house? But anyway at least it’s nice to know what pronoun to use when referring to you. I’m a guy who’s well past 50, already retired from the construction industry fact. So I don’t mind typing away here occasionally. Although I do get a little irritated when we spend our time repeating the same warnings, but it seems not only do new people on the blog not bother to go back to previous stuff, but some of the ones you’re responding to don’t even acknowledge what you’ve written.

Sorry… were either of these posts about specific experiences with the builders mentioned? I have in fact already read all the general advice here and was looking for specific feedback on those specific builders. As stated my assumption is that they would be problematic, but I’m open to being proved wrong so I asked for feedback from people with actual experience with them. I though the point of this page was to give and solicit reviews about builders? Condescending rants about the inferiority of other people who dare to ask questions serve no useful purpose.

Every franchise is different as is every build with more builders and building companies popping up every day so if you’re looking for someone to tell you that the names you have mentioned are great or not so great you’ll be waiting a while. What Chris C and I were trying to tell you is that if you do your own due diligence and perhaps start with the contract first you will weed out the less scrupulous ones early on saving you money and time. But just like Chris C mentioned, no one really listens because it’s not what you want to hear. Best of luck!