The prices are in and one of these builders will build your house. What happens if the total is higher than you hoped.
The builder's quote came in over budget. You've spent real money to get here, the drawings are finished, and the first feeling is that the project is over. It isn't. This is one of the most common conversations I have at this point, and most tenders that come back high are recoverable.
What decides it is the order you do things in. There are around seven levers and they do very different amounts of damage to the house you were going to get. The easiest ones to spot on a page — my fee, the good windows, my time on site — are the smallest, and cutting the last of those costs you money later rather than saving it now.
Before any of that, the prices get read properly. A price isn't a number, it's a scope with a number attached, and that reading is mine to do. Sometimes the honest answer is that the brief was always bigger than the budget — if that's what happened, I'll say so.
Sometimes the brief was always bigger than the budget. If that's what happened, I'll tell you.
This step produces a recommendation. Every price read against the same scope, the preferred builder negotiated with, and a written report telling you which one to accept and why. The lowest price is frequently not the lowest cost.
You're about to hand a large amount of money to someone you've only recently met. Having someone in the room whose only interest is yours changes how that feels. You get to decide with good information and the freedom to ask me anything.
On your own the lowest number tends to win, because the total is the only part of a quote that's easy to compare. Plenty of people do it and it works out. What's harder is seeing what one price includes and another doesn't.
I read each price for what's included, excluded, carried as an allowance or quietly assumed, and put them into the same shape so they can be compared. I negotiate with the preferred builder and give you a written recommendation. If the number needs to come down, I take you through the levers in the order that protects the house — area and form first, finishes later, and never the parts that just defer the cost into the build.
Nothing on the first afternoon. Bring it to me instead. I get the prices into the same format and read the exclusions, because a good part of the gap is often scope one builder carried and another wasn't. Then we work out which problem it is — the design grew, the market is busy, or the drawings left questions that got priced as risk.
In rough order of value returned for damage done: reduce floor and roof area, because square metres are the biggest lever there is. Simplify the form — fewer corners, fewer roof planes, fewer level changes. Keep the wet areas where they are. Then substitute finishes, which is the easiest cut to reverse. Deleting documentation isn't on the list, because it moves cost rather than removing it.
An allowance for work that can't be priced exactly yet — underpinning, rewiring an old house, a retaining wall whose depth nobody can see. It adjusts against actual cost once the work happens. A contract sum carrying a long list of allowances isn't quite a fixed price, so I go through them before you sign.
Often yes, and on a Queenslander it can be the difference between building and not. Stage at the structural and wet-area boundary rather than mid-room — the work that opens the house up and sorts the plumbing first, the finishing out later. You do pay twice for site establishment, and the approvals should cover both stages from the start.
Sometimes that's genuinely the right call, and I'd rather say so than pretend otherwise. Builders know what's expensive to build and their suggestions are often excellent. What I'd add is a second read: which savings you'll never notice, and which ones you'd feel every day. Take the suggestions, then let me test them.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.
