Choosing a Builder!

Picking a builder out of all of the hundreds available in Victoria was no walk in the park.
A friend of mine had previously built with Porter Davis, and had nothing but good things to tell me about them! 

So Nath and I took to the display homes all around Melbourne in search of our dream home design, with Porter Davis in mind as a good builder. After going in and out of more homes than i have fingers and toes, we went into the Porter Davis 'Parkville' in one of the eastern suburbs. This had everything we wanted, Study, rumpus adjoined to the spare bedrooms, back alfresco and a spacious living area. A few months later we then fell in love with the Porter Davis 'Regatta' also! Similar to the Parkville in that it was a size '23', with a separate study and Rumpus joined to the spare bedrooms, this design was a pretty logical floorplan for our needs. If someone had of waved a $30k cheque in our faces around that time we probably would have jumped on one of the two homes for our first build. 

But i decided it probably wasn't wise to pick your house on floorplan alone. I began to research online with sites like homeone and product review where previous customers write their concerns and praises about their builders. Porter David was ok, but didn't really have a large amount of shining reviews. Carlisle homes on the otherhand had almost a 95% approval rating from the thousands of people who have built with them.  The longer we waited, researched and visited displays, the more we became fonder of the builders 'Carlisle Homes'. 

Carlisle homes had really excellent reviews online, that can be seen here:
http://www.productreview.com.au/p/carlisle-homes.html
Where as although we had a really good review from a friend, Porter Davis's online reviews weren't amazing and they had a few disgruntled customers: 
http://www.productreview.com.au/p/porter-davis-homes.html

Another point is that Carlisle homes has an AMAZING showroom 'Spectra' for choosing interior and exterior finishes etc, where as Porter Davis's 'Hopetoun Interiors' was a little lack lustre and disappointing. (Now in 2015 they actually have quite a good one called the World of style though in a really cool converted brick warehouse in South Melb). 

Porter Davis Hoptoun Interiors:

Carlisle Homes Spectra:

So in summation: 

I think we are going to go with Carlisle Homes! Woo hoo!!!