RENOVATION BROKER
DESIGN/GUIDE/TENDER/RENOVATE
We design your new home independently from builders, enabling us to obtain multiple quotes, compare prices, timeframes, and more. You choose the best option for you and we stay with you through to key handover, ensuring a seamless journey.
Renovation Broker service includes
- Award winning designers
- Stylish, sustainable, functional designs
- Access to display homes to help visualisation
- Price and budget guidance
- Clear accurate timelines
- Specification creation
- Access 21 builders who meet our 7 point check
- Multiple quotes from one Location
- Builder comparison spreadsheet
- Hidden cost analysis and allowance
- Supplier discounts
- Unbiased independent guidance all the way
The Renovating Broker Service helps in 3 main ways
Custom home designed just for you.
We take a detailed brief, ask insightful and intuitive questions to design your perfect home, specifically for your lifestyle and budget. We work with you to uncover your desires, needs and wants, guiding you all the way to a great outcome.
Independent and unbiased advice to give you the best outcomes.
We are independent and unbiased – we reveal what the builders may not. We use out decades of building industry experience and building over a thousand homes to help you understand contracts, anticipate costs, and explore options, empowering you to make the best decisions for your home.
Connect with the best builders for your project.
IBA meticulously chooses the builders it collaborates with, utilising our extensive industry knowledge to select the best. We regularly work with 21 builders who meet our strict 7-point criteria.
Together, we select three builders best aligned to meet your building needs and arrange quotes for comparison.
16 common frustrations people experience renovating...
and how to avoid them.
- Engaging an architect who claims to work within your budget, only to receive a builder’s quote that exceeds it by hundreds of thousands.
- Opting for a builder with shaky financial foundations who may go bankrupt during the build or compromise on finishing touches to cut costs.
- Settling for a poor design that lacks functionality, efficient flow, energy efficiency, natural light, adequate ventilation, or is difficult to furnish.
- Dealing with a builder who takes years to complete a home, while others are building similar homes in half the time.
- Suffering from the builder’s inferior workmanship.
- Entering into a cost-plus contract, which can open the door to numerous complications.
- Lacking knowledge to collaborate with a builder to resolve conflicts or issues constructively.
- Overpaying for a home due to the builder’s reputation or because the builder takes advantage of their inexperience to charge exorbitant rates.
- Acting on incorrect recommendations from friends, family, or builder’s sales people leading to repercussions later.
- Being unaware of all the design choices available and later discovering desirable features they wish they had known about earlier.
- Planning for a certain budget, only to be met with escalating costs post contract signing, resulting in a final price well beyond initial expectations.
- Finding the builder difficult and uncooperative.
- Struggling to interpret builders’ plans or understand technical terms, leading to agreements made in good faith that fail to meet their expectations.
- Experiencing stress and concern throughout the building process, uncertain about the correctness of their decisions.
- Underestimating Costs: Homeowners often overlook the need for a contingency budget for unforeseen expenses, which are likely in renovations, potentially causing financial difficulties or incomplete projects.
- Poor communication and a lack of openness from the builder can result in significant frustration and confusion for the client.
The Solution
Our approach is similar to a General Practitioner (GP) role at a medical practice; we assess your unique housing requirements and convene a team of specialised experts to cater to your situation. We harness our extensive experience to navigate you to a great outcome.
We are a “Jack of all trades but a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.” We know a lot about design, engineering, construction, builders, council requirements, prices, hidden costs and more. We use this information to guide you into having a great home, on budget and built well. We call in the experts in the areas we need it and guide you all the way through.
We call in the experts in the areas we need it and guide you all the way through.
How it works
- You will be assigned your own personal building advisor who will guide you on design, costs, builder selection, inclusions, build times, hidden costs and more.
- We design homes independently of builders, through our panel of designers and architects, so you own the Copyright.
- We collaborate with a network of 21 trusted builders, all known for their financial stability, timely construction, commendable workmanship, transparent pricing, clear communication, and ethical practices.
- We normally shortlist 1-3 builders who specialise in your project, get multiple quotes, create a spreadsheet for comparison purposes to help you decide on which. We will give you our opinion too.
- We’ll walk you through all the paperwork, help you understand the house plans, and give you tips on how to make your house even better whilst staying in budget.
- Our aim is to pre-emptively address any potential challenges or additional costs, ensuring that you are well-prepared and not caught off-guard.
- Our commitment is to accompany you from inception to completion, ensuring an orderly and hassle-free (as hassle-free as possible) journey.
- You will also benefit from exclusive discounts offered through our network of Supply
- Remarkably, our services incur no cost to you! We receive a standard referral fee from the builders only if you proceed with them. This ensures our objectives are aligned with yours, maintaining impartiality.
- We will save you time, money and stress by watching over the whole process with an experienced eye.
The IBA steps to renovating your home
#1 – We meet for a coffee to chat about your home, prices and what is involved etc. (no cost)
We discuss the process, costs, timeframes, what is involved, share design ideas and how we can make your vision a reality. This is completely complementary and no obligation to proceed past this point.
#2 - We bring in an expert designer to co-create your home.
We design your home using our expert panel of designers. We present the plans back to you with our recommendations and seeking your input. We amend the plans and repeat. This continues back and forth until you are happy with the plans. We guide you to keep on budget throughout this whole process.
#3 – We shortlist builders with your input and usually get 1-3 quotes from the selected builders.
We then present the quotes with a comparison spreadsheet that helps compare apples with apples. IBA goes through a thorough process of selecting builders using our industry knowledge. We will only put forward builders we would build with ourselves.
#4 – We stay with you from start to key hand over.
We don’t just and you over, we stay with you helping you avoid problems along your journey. If a problem does arise we are there to help you handle them. 95% of problems that can occur we avoid upfront by designing and advising you properly.
#Bonus - Access "builder's discounts" through our IBA building partners.
As a value add of building through IBA we have organised builders discounts on flooring, appliances, air conditioning, robe fit outs and more. You could save 10’s of thousands.
Chat to us!
We would love to work with you on your renovation or new build.
Let's talk!
GET IN TOUCH
Email: Behan@buildingadvice.au
Call: 0407993183
What is a renovation broker?
The traditional way of building is to go to builders individually, find a few you like and get them to design and price a home for you. From here you choose the one you like and sign with them. It should be super easy…right?
Unfortunately, most people find the process complicated, annoying, confusing, scary and painful often resulting in a lot of guesswork and hoping for the best.
All too often people are hit with huge delays, budget blowouts, blatant lying, shoddy build quality and bad service.
All of the above can be avoided by getting the right advice and guidance from the start. This is where IBA comes in. We have 20+ years industry experience. We know all the builder’s tactics and tricks, we know how to design an awesome home, what things cost to keep you on budget and how to get the best results.
It costs not more to build through IBA so let us build you a great home without the hassles.
The results to expect from renovating with IBA ?
You will build a home that looks and feels great. You would have avoided having to go through trial and error to get the home right and would have had the confidence that you are on track, as you have an expert guiding you throughout.
You may be interested in...
Our Reno or Demo Quiz
Not sure if you should Renovate/extend or just bowl it over and build new. Try our quiz.
Renovation Designs
See the designs we have done for our clients. Some are single storey and some two storey.
Finding a Builder
How IBA selects our builders
Choosing a builder will either make or break your experience and outcome. For most people finding the right one can be a very difficult task. Big brands have multi-million dollar budgets telling they are the best… but are they? Forums and review sites are unreliable and friends and family can only go on their limited experience with recommendations.
This is why people use IBA as third party unbiased referrers.
With 20 years building industry experience we have an inside knowledge of how a lot of builders really work. We know which ones really care about their clients, which ones over charge because of a their name, the ones that are only about making money, the ones that have no care at all and the ones that want the best for you and will go above and beyond to achieve it. We can see past the millions of dollars spent on marketing, the review sites and Shonky Builder Groups and get to the true heart of the builder.
The people make the builder, and our relationships with builders makes IBA. There is 150 people involved in building a home. This ranges from designers, admins staff, estimators, trades, shire people and more. We look at the leadership of the businesses, who runs the show. Are they good people? Are they passionate about building? What is there relationship with their clients? What do their current clients and past clients say about them? This is information you will not find on their website and only through insight and relationships do we feel comfortable to put them forward.
Building a home is more than price and inclusions (although these are important) this is a home built by humans for passionate clients. We look for the extra services that become really important throughout the process. We look at how the builder communicates. Do they allow you to make changes in construction. Do you get the supervisors direct number, do they have interior designers, what are the home to supervisor ratios, what guarantees do they offer etc. Will they be proactive in helping you have a great outcome or passive. We ask the questions that most people don’t think to ask.
It is important to get value for money. If your budget is fixed then you want to get the best home, inclusions and price for your budget. At the same time, you don’t want low quality. No one will notice your awesome kitchen if you have a 3mm crack down the wall. Being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you have to have low quality. It means you need a builder that has the right balance of inclusions, workmanship, service and price. We put forward the right builder for the right project. To come in on budget but also deliver a great home.
Our happy customers
People we have helped build
Oscar and Celeste
Ardross
Independent Building Advice gave us a perfect house design after having unsuccessfully engaged with 3 top building companies that failed to listen to our needs and produced a design that lacked practicality.
The IBA design was then tendered to 4 medium to small builders with a proven track record and financially sound. The end result was that we not only got a better more functional house but at a cost between 21 and 27% cheaper than that of the ‘top’ builders.
We also saved time in the process as Behan came to our home to work with us on the design rather than us having to book time with the ‘top’ builders who were time poor and did not offer up the same practical expertise.
We are so happy with IBA and Behan and hope you make the right decision and call him too, just like we did.
Angus and Liz
Stirling
Behan has been an invaluable asset to building our new home here in Perth, WA. IBA was the answer to our prayers after months of searching through display homes, project builders and sales calls.
I would recommend him to anyone looking for a helping hand starting their own home building journey.
Stuart and Fiona
Waterford
Doing your first home build is a daunting prospect that you want to get right. Behan has made our first stage of this process so easy and enjoyable and I have full confidence going ahead.
It’s all about having someone who knows the industry to avoid making the mistakes. Great advice to ensure we get a home that suits us, for the price we want in a timely way.
Frequently Asked Questions
Commonly asked questions but free to email us directly any question you like.
A builder will give you biased advice on how they do things.
A builder’s sales people are not always the most reliable for information.
If the builder designs your home they own the copyright.
We work for you not the builder so the advice we give is in your best interest.
IBA can compare different builder so you get a clear comparison.
We looks for-
Financially secure
Build a good home.
Well priced.
Have decent build times.
Proactive in fixing problems.
Great service and communication.
No problems, see our third party advisor service.
This really depends on your job. Happy to quote you over the phone.
Design costs range from $0-3000 with 3D fly throughs being extra.
Our builder “shortlist and tender” process is a free service.
Reach out for a fixed quote.
Anywhere within a 100km of Perth and the South West.
We can still help. We can give you some feedback on the layout as well as help you find the right builder.
Our tender service is free.
We sure do, see our building inspections part of this website.
We have a panel of designers and architects that we use regularly. We will select the right one for your home project. Our process is we catch up with you and create a good design brief and guide you but the home is designed by specialists who make sure it looks amazing and compliant.
Email, text or call us with your question and we see how we can assist.
Chat to us!
We would love to work with you on your renovation or new build.
Let's talk!
GET IN TOUCH
Email: Behan@buildingadvice.au
Call: 0407993183