RAM Constructions win the Chief Minister's Affordable Housing Award

Hello,
I was thinking of buying a townhouse which will be constructed by these people (RAM constructions). The cost is good for the area being Harrison, however I am not too sure now based on the comments. Do you think there is a chance of massive problems that I will end up paying money for ? I understand there will be a compromise to quality due to low cost but is it sub standard ? Would realy appreciate your advice based on your experiences. Kindly advice.

I agree with having open criteria and what specifically was entered. I wonder if each builder is ‘nominated’ by entering a single house of their choice?

On variations, I can confirm other builders allow significant changes (eg. kitchens). GE Shaw and Renhomes are two that come to mind. The default designs I saw were pretty crappy and simplistic, but it would help bring the advertised starting cost under the threshold. Building multiple nearly identical copies of a plan makes life easier for the volume builders.

Just looked at the plans and it is easy to see why FH owners seem to have steered clear of RAM’s available (2BR) blocks:
* very little storage space
* the laundry is in the garage – WTF?
* ground floor toilet opens directly into the kitchen and living area!

So much for not compromising on amenity…

Eyl said :

“RAM Construction’s winning project in Bonner demonstrates that affordable housing does not have to compromise lifestyle or amenity.”

Tho it does compromise quality, if only people knew the real side of the story ;(.

Looks like the MBA awards is all a popularity contest.

I guess the satisfaction of their customers wasn’t a criteria for winning this award, as I think that If they had actually bothered to consult the people who own the homes, it might have been a different outcome.

Would be interested to know which houses they included in their submission for the award, and how the awards are judged. From personal experience, I know that some awards of this kind are based on submissions written by the companies themselves and its a case of who writes the best sounding submission.

Also interesting to note is that Ram constructions are the only company on the Ownplace program who still have house and land packages available, other builders on the program sold theirs months ago.

Eyl said :

“RAM Construction’s winning project in Bonner demonstrates that affordable housing does not have to compromise lifestyle or amenity.”

Tho it does compromise quality, if only people knew the real side of the story ;(.

Looks like the MBA awards is all a popularity contest.

I agree – I cant speak personally about the quality but we chose another builder over RAMS in the end for a heap of reasons, the main being that they did not allow for us to change things like kitchen design, they all had to be consistent with all the connecting apartments – i assume to keep costs down. They also took forever to do anything, incluing getting back to us with information. There were other design features that got downgraded every time we visited them to discuss the plans. (Double garage got changed to double carport, then to single carport…) Usually I would understand that certain things need to be this way to keep costs down and “affordable” and within the budgets of the builders however we had no problems finding another building comapny that did allow us to change kitchen designs, flooring materials, etc.

As we live in Bonner we see RAMS buildings all over the place – they are always the cheapest looking, and it is obvious that they havent allowed anyone any type of personalisation because they are all the same. Small and bland. Most typically look like miltary style demountables.

Before anyone says “You cant have everything for that price, needs to be affordable bla bla” i can say that there are many other builders that do provide better quality buildings at the same “OwnPlace” price – it just appears that RAMS skimp on features and quality so they can make more profits. Don’t get me wrong, thats the name of the game – and they did have nice people – but they took so long to get back to us about anything.

I am very grateful that the OwnPlace scheme has allowed to afford my own house – the scheme itself is great – however the RAMS experience was a warning that some building companies do not care what the customer wants – assuming that we should be happy with what we get. We’ll we were happy with what we got, from a builder other than RAMS….

In the end, even though we signed up with RAMS first, we went with another builder and were in our new house over 7 months earlier than the RAMS home we chose…

“RAM Construction’s winning project in Bonner demonstrates that affordable housing does not have to compromise lifestyle or amenity.”

Tho it does compromise quality, if only people knew the real side of the story ;(.

Looks like the MBA awards is all a popularity contest.