We built our so called dream home in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne with Porter Davis.

This is our third build, so we know the process and we know what we’re looking at. And we’ll be the first to admit that building homes isn’t easy. We’d like to be able to tell you that building with Porter Davis was a positive experience however, the reality was it was nothing short of a nightmare. “Respect The Dream”? Yeah, no luck there! In fact, we were the least respected people in the whole process. It’s amazing to think you can spend your life savings and be treated like they’re doing YOU a favour! We should have built again with Henley, at least we knew what to expect with them.

The first Site Supervisor had no idea. He never even carried a plan for the house and had no idea even where the windows should be. 6 weeks out of training and he’s building our dream home?!

- A full tear down and rebrick of the house;
- Frame overhanging the slab at the front of the house;
- Outdoor inbuilt bbq area smashed to pieces after brick tear down;
- Ardex levelling compound poured all over garage floor which is now worn and riddled with cracks;
- Garage ceiling defective under the Australian Standard;
- Burst water pipe in pantry wall. 8 attempts for Stegbar to replace the glass splashback in both pantry and kitchen (talk about do your head in!);
- Bowed walls;
- Termite Protection pipes smashed to pieces;
- Tiles pooling with water in alfresco and poorly laid on balcony;
- Over $7,000 of errors in the contract in their favour;
- Leaking frameless shower – 4 attempts to fix this and 12 months on, the base of the frame is rotting away due to the water not running off it;
- Faulty appliances (faulty leg on Blanco dishwasher, outdoor rangehood flute not installed for 3 months and fan defective after only a few uses);
- Uncapped sewerage riser pipe emanating a disgusting smell in wall (found by my husband);
- Gutters leaking down brickwork;
- Study floor falls 10mm;
- Columns in alfresco out of square;
- Incorrect butler’s pantry installed (no shadow line);
- Cement sheet hanging from 2nd storey porch;
- House handed over with cracked and chipped tiles as well as bumps and marks all over the house after handover we realised they had used a magic sponge removing dirty marks from walls rather than spending money and time re-painting. This must be the commitment to quality they speak of on there website.

Lucky we built the Prestige Range!

Our Building Coordinator was great and sadly the only positive part about our Porter Davis experience. In fact, all the girls in the office were good but they’re not the people building your home.

Building with Porter Davis would have to have been one of the worst and most stressful experiences of our lives which resulted in a nervous breakdown. Our advice to anyone contemplating building with Porter Davis would be – walk away. We certainly would not touch them again with a ten-foot pole!

We built a 50sq home in the Eastern suburbs of Melbourne with Porter Davis.

This is our third build, so we know the process and we know what we’re looking at. And we’ll be the first to admit that building homes isn’t easy. We’d like to be able to tell you that building with Porter Davis was a positive experience however, the reality was it was nothing short of a nightmare. “Respect The Dream”? Yeah, no luck there! In fact, we were the least respected people in the whole process. It’s amazing to think you can spend $450,000 and be treated like they’re doing YOU a favour! We should have built again with Henley, at least we knew what to expect with them.

The first Site Supervisor had no idea. He never even carried a plan for the house and had no idea even where the windows should be. 6 weeks out of training and he’s building our dream home?!

- A full tear down and rebrick of the house;
- Frame overhanging the slab at the front of the house;
- Outdoor inbuilt bbq area smashed to pieces after brick tear down;
- Ardex levelling compound poured all over garage floor which is now worn and riddled with cracks;
- Garage ceiling defective under the Australian Standard;
- Burst water pipe in pantry wall. 8 attempts for Stegbar to replace the glass splashback in both pantry and kitchen (talk about do your head in!);
- Bowed walls;
- Termite Protection pipes smashed to pieces;
- Tiles pooling with water in alfresco and poorly laid on balcony;
- Over $7,000 of errors in the contract in their favour;
- Leaking frameless shower – 4 attempts to fix this and 12 months on, the base of the frame is rotting away due to the water not running off it;
- Faulty appliances (faulty leg on Blanco dishwasher, outdoor rangehood flute not installed for 3 months and fan defective after only a few uses);
- Uncapped sewerage riser pipe emanating a disgusting smell in wall (found by my husband);
- Gutters leaking down brickwork;
- Study floor falls 10mm;
- Columns in alfresco out of square;
- Incorrect butler’s pantry installed (no shadow line);
- Cement sheet hanging from 2nd storey porch;
- House handed over with cracked and chipped tiles as well as bumps and marks all over the house after handover we realised they had used a magic sponge removing dirty marks from walls rather than spending money and time re-painting.

Lucky we built the Prestige Range!

Our Building Coordinator was great and sadly the only positive part about our Porter Davis experience. In fact, all the girls in the office were good but they’re not the people building your home.

Building with Porter Davis would have to have been one of the worst and most stressful experiences of our lives which resulted in a nervous breakdown. Our advice to anyone contemplating building with Porter Davis would be – walk away. We certainly would not touch them again with a ten-foot pole!

Approximate cost: $450000

There is no zero otherwise would have given.Very unprofessional

I am writing this so much frustration and would not ever recommend Porter Davies do anyone. They lack quality, on-time and even not reachable. You would need to chase your building supervisor for updates and if you are lucky, you can get them over phone. Building wraps were torn the next day and they started installing walls without repairing it. Make sure to hire a security person, otherwise anything not owned by the contractors will be stolen. They literally stole install turf laid in the nature strip the very next day. Sucks!!!!

Absolutely dreadful every step of the way. Customer service and responsiveness has been terrible by most of the staff. Every step of the way they have tried to move us on to another department. No one will take responsibility for the issues we have. All staff members seem to be over-worked and highly incompetent. We have had major issues post construction. For example, they have left us with a giant hole in our dining room ceiling and no light for over 4 weeks now due to the upstairs plumbing leaking. We have BLACK MOLD in our home due to a gutter leak. I cannot, for the life of me, get them to even follow up on this issue and we made them aware of this health hazard nearly a week ago. I have been having to follow up with them every 24-48 hours to get responses for the last two weeks and I still have not been able to get them to respond to me and actually action our concerns. Such a negative experience overall. I really hope people take my advice to not go near them with a 10 foot pole. Looks like we'll be lodging a dispute and going down legal avenues as they simply don't want to deal with clients.

Worst builders ever. Porter Davis had massive delays because they told me at the last minute that I needed a storm water pump installed that costs $30k. After handover, my landscaper inspected all the pipe work and many of the pipes were damaged and broken and not draining water. What’s worse is that they forgot to connect power to the water pump, and also forgot to install the control box. It was such a big job it took them several weeks. Worst of all, they forgot to dig so that the water would be pumped off the property. So it was actually being pumped back into the house and flooding itself. When I told them about all the damage and the incomplete job, they said lucky there was not much rain... The house was not livable at this time. So I asked for compensation. And they said, no compensation because your house didn’t flood in the time. It took them another 2 months to finish off the job. I basically paid them $30k for a pump system, that they didn’t even install properly. And my house could have flooded at any minute, but all they said was, lucky we didn’t get much rain! They even gave me a certificate complying the pump system when it wasn’t even 50% done right! Would not recommend to anyone.

Approximate cost: $500000

We are writing this with much frustration and disappointment from the experience we had building and administration work with Porter Davis. We had uncountable issues from the beginning to now with our house. It’s all starts with the numerous faults in the framework to now. Instead of taking 8-9 month to build, it took over one and half year to build. During this time as a result of selling our existing house in order to afford the new house, we moved to an old house which had mold and there was a kind of allergy grass all around the house which made me and my daughter really sick. Also, as a result of their delay, we had to pay over $450 per week rent when PD only paid us $250 as liquidated damages. They have kept postponing the day of completion for over one and a half year. We sacrificed all those things by hoping that in the end, we will move to live in our house. But when that was taking longer and longer we finally decided to pay the final invoice and move in (22/06/2018) and let the site supervisor finish the rest of outstanding work while we are in the house with our 3-year-old daughter. It is still going.

Now the main problem we are facing is the final invoice we have overpaid to them. The final invoice was sent to us by PD on 09/05/2018 amount of $21,449 to be paid by the settlement time. However, during the build we took off some upgraded items from the original price and PD made some variation during this years as well, as a result, we had a balance of over $33,000 to be credit back from the original price. But I asked the PD as a favour for us to make the final invoice to $55,000 (the original price the bank approved) and then credit the balance to our account, because that way we have enough money to finish off rest of work in the house, without going back to the bank to top up our loan. I have to say that was the biggest mistake I have done.

When I didn’t hear from their account department at all from after the settlement, I made an inquiry, and then they send me a response asking “what I am talking about?”. After when I explained, they remembered and now paid me thousands of dollars less than the amount of my credit money.

They are refusing to pay the part of the balance and says there was a mistake on their accounts and they have decided to take off the amount from our overpaid amount to them. They have done this without any explanation or acknowledgment with us. We are questioning how can they change everything like that with no invoice given or any reason given, just take our money and close the accounts. How can they do this to us?

PD has put us our life through unimaginable stress during the past years. When we thought we are finally over with the battle to build with PD and dealing with their shifty work, now we have to seek legal assistance to get our credit balance or to find out what rights do they have to go against the agreed invoice of both parties and take out from our overpaid amount to cover their mistakes without acknowledging us. As a first step, we are seeking help from Domestic Building Dispute Resolution Victoria.

PD never care about the customer but they send the invoice even before many works outstanding. They are happy as long as they pocket their money whatever and whenever they can. We hope you enjoy putting innocent peoples lives in jeopardy and making our life miserable.

Approximate cost: $700000

I recently contacted Porter Davis due to a construction issue with my home. The issue was clearly a building fault at time of construction, which didn't become apparent until recently. After coming out and reviewing the problem, which was actually a fault of one of their former contractors, Porter Davis assisted me with rectifying the issue with very little cost to myself. This was over and above their obligations, but they came to my rescue. Many others would have absolved themselves of any responsibility and walked away from the issue, but Porter Davis ensured that I was supported, assisted and compensated in a genuine and caring way. Well done Porter Davis team.

Despite being told from framing that the walls were not straight it has not been fixed. Many many issues were completely ignored until we went to ACAT.
However once this was finally (6 months longer than build was meant to take!) addressed the house is lovely and we are happy.
You need to be on them all the time and hire an independent inspector.
Despite all this we would use them again as the house is first class (prestige build)

Peter,
I could not possibly recommend Porter Davis to anyone. Once you have signed up you are definitely a number. Their practices are very deceptive, charged for major items such as sarking under roof and then proceeded to not install it. All manner of excuses as to why I did not get it to save taking the roof off. Was told Porter Davis did not do infills but now being told I have to have them. Windows fitted at wrong heights in kitchen and family room. Sliding doors fitted incorrectly. Wiring and piping installed in the middle of the pantry floor. Frames just failed inspection for the second time. Same faults repeated in attempt to make things right. Garage door frame out of square, electrical box only held in by wires coming in at the bottom. Guttering installed incorrectly. Just cannot go on anymore as it it so depressing. I am writing this as I have just arrived home from another meeting with the site manager who once again did not turn up. Not a single person in Porter Davis puts the customer, who pays their wages, first. It is all about ripping you off with shoddy practices. Whatever you do, think twice, no three times before signing up with them.