Finding a builder

How do you pick a builder to ask for a quote?

1. Use local knowledge

Walk around your neighbourhood looking for renovations you like the look of and knock on doors, speak to the owners about who did their renovation and what they thought of the job. This quickly led me to a builder who specialises in my kind of house and seemed to do what I was looking for. He came heavily recommended, but seemed to work at the top end of the market, which I knew might mean we couldn’t afford him. Worth a shout though just in case.

2. Ask your draftsman or architect

The draftsman who drew up my plans (David Reynolds of Reynolds Design) had a list of builders which had built from his plans in the past. As he’d often kept in touch with the clients during the build, and he had built up a feeling for my tastes while drawing up the plans, he was able to offer advice on which builders might suit our build and budget. One was the same one I’d found from walking through the neighbourhood, one ended up saying he was too busy to quote, but a third came in as a promising contender for the build.

3. Ask friends

I asked friends (and friends of friends) for their recommendations. This threw up a few names. The upside was that the friends I asked were in the same income bracket as us and so the builders were likely to be more in our margin than the “local knowledge” builder. The downside is that you don’t always have the same tastes as your friends and so I had to be careful that the enthusiastic recommendation from a friend was actually for something that would work for our family.

4. Do a Google search

Sounds like a long shot but actually it worked quite well. I searched under Queenslander renos and good builders and got a company who seemed to tick the boxes of what I was looking for. The advantages were that they were fresh to the area and came in without any baggage about what was expected in our area. The disadvantage, of course, that they didn’t come with a recommendation.