When you look at building a project home the first thing you’ll notice is that pretty much every builder is going to be running some kind of promotion offering buyers tens of thousands of dollars worth of upgrades for your new home for “free…” or a small sum of money.
Rawson were running their Orange Carpet Event promotion which they’ve run on and off with similar inclusions for a year or so. The promotion is valued by Rawson at $50,000 worth of upgrades, which is pretty significant, but unfortunately unless you take up every one of the upgrades you might not benefit from the full value of the promotion. We’re going to take a look at what our build could take advantage of from this promotion.
SUPPLIERS
The following suppliers have offered upgrades and additional inclusions as part of the Orange Carpet Event.
RAWSON
First off Rawson have thrown in a few nice upgrades to the home to kick off the promotion. From this we are taking advantage of all the upgrades, we combined the 2 niches to create the 2 storey niche in the hallway void. We found that Rawson are pretty flexible with some of the promotion items, they have fit out our laundry with full width floor and wall cupboards as part of the promotion.
Running Total Value = $10,320
LIFESTYLE STORE
This is a nice addition I hadn’t seen any other builder include in their promotions. There are some nice Audio Visual inclusions in this promotion, we’re waiting to hear back from Rawson whether we can upgrade/swap any of the items included in this and I’ll update this post when we find out.
Running Total Value = $17,327
STEGBAR
We really like this upgrade! We were upgrading our windows to Low-E glass with Mojo Homes and the price was over $10,000! We probably have a similar amount of glass in the Chifley 37 MKII so the value is probably a little more than what is stated in this as it’s just the average cost for Rawson floor plans and ours is a little larger than your average Rawson home.
Running Total Value = $23,777
CAESARSTONE
This was a really nice upgrade as we were planning on using the concrete colours in our home because we like the matt finish. We also like that fact it upgrades to stone benches in all the bathrooms. We didn’t want 40mm bench tops, we prefer the slimmer profile of the 20mm plus we’re tossing up doing the shark nose finish to the island.. Rawson came to the table and let us substitute 40mm bench tops in the kitchen for a waterfall end in 20mm, this is probably cheaper for them but it means there is no cost to do it for us! Win Win!
Running Total Value = $29,477
TILE DIRECT
This is the first upgrade we’re not making use of, we’re going to try and see when we do our tile selections of we can get some discount of some tile upgrades elsewhere but we’ll see.. We’re going to use laminate flooring throughout the house, we like that it is hardy and loose lay so in the future as our tastes change and we look at making changes we can easily pull it up and change it which is not easy with tiles.
Running Total Value = $29,477
DAIKIN
While Daikin probably isn’t our first choice of ducted AC supplier, Actron has some very nice premium systems with some nice modern features it is nice that we’ve been upgraded to a more efficient system and a proper zone controller.
Running Total Value = $34,077
PGH
We’re building with Hebel so this is pretty useless to us, we did look at building with bricks at one point but wouldn’t have chosen any of these upgraded bricks.
Running Total Value = $34,077
CAROMA
Some nice upgrades from Caroma, we like the included tap and spout so haven’t chosen whether we will use this upgrade but I’ll include it anyway.
Running Total Value = $35,878
CLARK
Again this is one of those subjective upgrades which we’re not sure whether we will use, we’ve already included a upgraded under counter sink in the tender and we will probably use a different mixer so I won’t include this upgrade.
Running Total Value = $35,878
MONIER
Just like the PGH and Tile Direct upgrade this one depends on the material you’re using, these inclusions are a bit of a let down when they don’t offer an alternative if you’re not building with brick or a tiled roof. We are building with a colorbond roof so we won’t be using this upgrade.
Running Total Value = $35,878
B&D
This is a nice upgrade which while not the most expensive one, it is actually the cheapest. It is good to see we are getting this included, the auto lock mechanism is very nice and the smart phone kit is going to be useful.
Running Total Value = $36,578
CORINTHIAN DOORS
It is nice to see Rawson think about this when they upgraded the ceiling height, again while not a huge cost it is better in our pocket!
Running Total Value = $37,458
ELECTROLUX
This is handy because we gave our washing machine to our parents when we sold our unit as theirs was broken, so we’re washing machine-less. Just another item we won’t need to worry about buying when we have a mortgage again!
Running Total Value = $38,457
CONCLUSION
TOTAL = $38,457
So while we’re not getting the full value of the Orange Carpet Event promotion we really feel the inclusions packaged into it are very good and compliment the standard inclusions really well. Our one criticism is that while the upgrades to items everyone will have in their new home are nice such as A/C, Bench tops, Ceiling Height, Windows etc.. the upgrades to items like Tiles, Bricks and Roof Tiles are dependant on you using these materials. If you don’t use these materials you miss out on the added value the promotion offers you, I just wish they’d offer options for the other similar materials like Hebel, Colorbond and other flooring options too. I assume promotions like these are the supplier trying to sell on you their product over other options which will become more expensive without the promotion.
Overall the Rawson Orange Carpet Event promotion is one of the better promotions offered by the project home builders in NSW.
We are also building the chifley 37 mk2 and we are about 8 weeks from being finished.
Hey Steve thats awesome! How’s it going?