- Building or renovating your home is the largest investment people usually make in their lifetime, so it's really important to get that right from the start. Hi everyone, I'm Louise from Perway Construction Services, and I'm gonna talk to you today about how to choose the right builder. So remember, if you are choosing the builder, it's likely that you are going to be working together for a long period of time, so like any relationship, it's really important that there's trust and clear, honest communication. You really need to have confidence in the ability of the builder to give you that really great quality outcome, and also to give you a great service, so it is important to do your homework and check that you are going to be the right fit for each other. To break it down, really the most important things to check are that they hold appropriate qualifications, that they're licensed, they have a really good reputation, they're competitive in price, and that they hold really good forms and lines of communication. To check that your builder is legitimate, you can check out their actual website. You can look for the builder's name and their name of their business, double-check their ABN number, and make sure that they don't have a string of business names attached and that's just a few red flags for you. All builders need to be registered with the Building Commission of Western Australia, so you can do this by hopping onto the Building Commission website and checking that the company is registered as a building contractor, and also that the builder has a building practitioner onboard within their business as well. You're making sure that they've got the skills, competencies, and the qualifications to do you work appropriately. The next thing is really the reputation. Most builder and tradies for that matter have social media pages, websites. It's really probably a good idea to jump on there and see the reviews, look at their Facebook reviews and their Google reviews. Google reviews is actually probably the best because as a customer who writes a Google review, you can't actually delete that, so you will get the full, 100% honesty from those reviews. I think Facebook reviews you can delete if it's a bad review, so it's a really good idea to check out both, and also the, if you're looking at their website and their social media pages, you will be seeing the kind of style that that builder works to, and you'll have a look at their previous projects and see if that really suits the taste that you're after. Another step to choose the right builder is really checking out their reliability. Have they been referred by someone else? Any good builder will be happy to give you some references from previous clients, so you can always ask for that as well. It is important that you are the right fit, if you've had an initial conversation and meet with the builder, making sure that you're personalities are right for each other because that person's gonna be in your home for a substantial period of time and you wanna make sure that you actually like them and you're not dreading seeing the van pull up at seven o'clock in the morning. You really wanna make sure that they're friendly, supportive, have really good communication skills, and someone that you feel like you have a connection with, so that's probably an important trait to look for. Another thing to look for is price. So price is a factor, but not just checking that your builder has got the lowest price. You should be ensuring that your builder is competitive. You can check with other building quotes, but it's a really good idea then to check that all the items of your scope of work are included and have been priced in to avoid any potential blowouts down the line, and you know, you should be prepared to pay for your builder's quotes. The builder that charges for the quotes, they have really put in that quality of time and effort into your renovation up-front to avoid any potential blowouts down the line. Builders that are giving free quotes aren't really free, and that the price is built in somewhere in your price. Essentially then you can end up with cost blowouts down the line. It's definitely something to consider. And last but not least, really that the builder will be reliable throughout the process, or that you're able to trust them and really ensure that you have a good connection, and that you can rely upon them to fix any problems should they arise. My questions that you should be asking are, are they licensed for my job? Can I see any references, previous testimonials? What are your insurances? Home indemnity insurance, also known as the warranty insurance, and builders should also have a general liability insurance as well, so checking those out and asking them what systems that they have in place for communication, for any issues that might arise down the line in the course of the job. We've got a set of processes in place to eliminate any fears surrounding this, so if you'd like to find out some more about that, just send us a message or an email or give us a call and we'd be happy to go through that with you. Thanks.