Choosing a builder usually comes down to a few Saturdays at display centres, a stack of brochures and a gut feel. The trouble is what separates a good build from an expensive one isn’t on display. They sit in the contract, the specification, and in what happens after you get the keys.

If you’re working out how to choose a home builder, these questions will tell you more in a single appointment than a month of comparing brochures.

1. Is the Builder Registered, and What Insurance Covers My Build?

Check the builder’s registration on the Building and Plumbing Commission (BPC) register yourself, and confirm your contract will be covered by Home Warranty.

The BPC replaced the Victorian Building Authority in July 2025 and now handles registration, insurance and disputes in one place. From 1 July 2026, eligible contracts for work over $20,000 are covered by Home Warranty instead of the old Domestic Building Insurance scheme.

Home Warranty provides up to $400,000 of assistance per home, and it can respond if a builder fails or refuses to finish or fix work, or if the builder has died, disappeared, or become insolvent. Ask for the builder’s registration number in writing and look it up before you pay a deposit.

2. What’s Actually Included in the Price, and What Counts as an Upgrade? 

Ask for the full written inclusions list, plus the real price of the display home you walked through with every upgrade itemised separately.

Display homes are specified to sell, so the version you fell in love with is rarely the version in the base price. The items that most often sit outside it are site costs, driveway, landscaping, fencing, floor coverings, window furnishings, heating and cooling, and staircase or void detailing. Walk through the display with the inclusions list in hand and ask, room by room, what is standard.

A builder who can show you where the base specification stops has nothing to hide. At Long Island Homes, our homes come with a range of luxury inclusions built into the base price, so you don’t have to upgrade to get the home of your dreams. 

Standard inclusions may feature:

• Designer kitchens with premium appliances
• Spacious open-plan living areas
• Modern bathrooms and fittings
• Energy-efficient materials and construction
• Flexible floor plans with upgrade options

3. Is it a Fixed-Price Contract, or Are There Provisional Sums?

“Fixed price” almost never means every line is fixed. Ask how many provisional sums and prime cost items are in the contract, what they cover, and what happens if the actual cost lands above the allowance.

Provisional sums are estimates for work that hasn’t been fully scoped yet, and site costs are the usual culprit. If the soil test and site survey haven’t been done before the price was set, your site cost allowance is a guess, and you’ll wear the difference. Ask whether the price includes the site costs for your block specifically, and what the contract says about price increases after signing. We price your block rather than an average one, and every provisional sum in your contract gets explained before you sign, not discovered afterwards. 

4. What Structural Specifications Do You Build To?

A double-storey home puts load through the frame that a single-storey plan never does, and that’s where the difference between builders shows up. The National Construction Code is a minimum, so the useful question isn’t whether a builder meets it but where they build above it and why. Get the answer in writing, because a specification you were told verbally isn’t a specification you’ve bought. 

Double-storey homes are our speciality. We engineered our first voided double-storey design in 2012, when no other Victorian builder was offering one, and the structural work behind a void — how you frame, brace and tie down a home with a two-storey open space through the middle of it — is the part of building we’ve spent the longest getting right. 

5. How Long Will My Build Take, and What Happens if You Run Late? 

Ask for the construction period in days in the contract, the circumstances that allow an extension of time, and what you’re entitled to if the builder runs past the agreed date.

Extension of time provisions are normal and reasonable ones cover weather, material delays and variations you request, but you should be able to read them and understand them before you sign. Ask the builder what their average build time was last year for a home like yours, and whether they’ll put an expected handover window in writing. 

We’ll give you a construction period in the contract, walk you through the extension of time clauses before you sign rather than after, and tell you what our homes of your size have actually taken to build. 

6. What Do a Builder’s Awards and Reviews Actually Tell Me?

Awards judged by an independent body with on-site assessment are worth something. For reviews, read the middle-range ones and the ones written mid-build as well as the ones at handover.

Master Builders Association awards are judged by industry peers who inspect the home, so they reflect build quality rather than marketing spend. Long Island Homes has won Victorian House of the Year 14 times and Australian House of the Year twice under that judging process. 

7. What Should I Look For When I Visit a Display Centre?

Look at the parts of the home that are expensive to build rather than expensive to style: the staircase and void, ceiling heights on both levels, window sizes, and how cleanly the joinery meets the walls.

Styling is the easiest thing to change in a display home after you move in, and it’s what you’re most likely to be sold on. Structure isn’t. Start with the staircase, because it’s the one element in a double-storey home that gets used every day and shows shortcuts fastest. 

Then look at the void. Straight lines, square corners and a balustrade that meets the floor cleanly are signs of a home engineered around the void rather than one where a hole was made to fit. We’ve been engineering voided double-storey designs since 2012, so it’s the part of the tour we enjoy most.

Check ceiling heights upstairs as well as downstairs, since plenty of double-storey homes drop the first floor to save money, and it’s the difference between bedrooms that feel generous and bedrooms that feel like an afterthought. And ask which of what you’re looking at is standard.

8. Who Will Be My Point of Contact During the Build?

Ask for the name and role of the person managing your build, how often you’ll get an update, and who you call when something goes wrong.

Most of the frustration people report during a build traces back to not knowing what’s happening. A builder who has a defined process, such as a nominated contact, scheduled updates and site visits at set construction stages, is telling you they’ve thought about this. A vague answer here usually predicts a vague answer later. 

When you build with us, you’ll have a named contact through construction, updates at each stage rather than only when you chase them, and site visits at agreed points so you see the home going up. 

9. What Happens After Handover?

Ask what the builder’s own maintenance or defects period covers, how you report an issue, and what the response time is.

Under Victorian law, builders carry statutory warranties on domestic building work, and those apply regardless of what the contract says. Structural defects are covered for longer than non-structural ones. Beyond the legal minimum, ask what the builder does in practice, because the difference between builders is almost never the warranty length and almost always whether anyone picks up the phone. 

Ask These Questions Before You Sign, Not After

None of these questions are unreasonable, and a good builder will have answers ready for all nine. The ones who get uncomfortable are the ones telling you something useful.

Bring this list to your next appointment. Our display centre team will work through every question with you, show you the inclusions list and the specification, and put the answers in writing so you can compare them honestly against anyone else you’re considering.