Kalka

We moved into our Kalka home in December 2015 and we are extremely happy with out home. Building can be a stressful process, however, we found the team to be very patient and explained the build process from start to finish. There were alway resources to call on for any questions. Communication from the team was fantastic with weekly updates (including photos). Two years on and we still love our house. The quality and standard of the build doesn't go unnoticed by guests. We love our forever home and wouldn't hesitate to recommend these guys. Should we ever look to build again in the future, Kalka would be the first people we would contact.

We received the keys to our new home this week and couldn't be happier! It's everything we wanted and the quality of the workmanship is second to none. The build went smoothly thanks to our wonderful site manager, Simon Hughes. He exceeded our expectations and went above and beyond on more than one occasion and we couldn't be more thankful for his professionalism and expertise. I also enjoyed the weekly progress emails Simon sent us, complete with photos! Family and friends loved watching the progress of the build as much as we did. The house was even finished earlier than expected! We could not recommend them highly enough.

Hi Beth, Hugh and the Kalka team,We just wanted to thank you for the ongoing work you send our way. You guys really are all a pleasure to deal with. Artwork is always spot on and set up well. The creativity we see from your team in the work that we then get to produce for you is among the best that we see.We look forward to continuing to partner with you to produce amazing results. We are enjoying watching Kalka grow as a business, and take great pride in our small part in assisting you to achieve positive outcomes as a business.Thanks again!Paul and The Team from Rogue Print

Kalka have now stopped taking new jobs but operate under the name “DC Living”. Steer clear of both! Wasted a year with this group and the only thing we have to show for the 12 months are a set of plans that don’t meet obvious council regulations (we had to do a Google search on my phone in front of their sales and management team to show them what they had missed). They tried to pressure us to financially commit to the next phase to have the plans amended and that’s when we knew this company is not the type of builders we wanted to work with. Their sales team gave false hopes/expectations for pricing and we are so glad we walked away from Kalka/DC Living when we did.

If you are looking for a building company who are honest and transparent, then I do not choose Kalka. Kalka’s owners and management are using the increase in the building costs and property prices to profiteer and gouge clients. How else do they explain an increase of more than $100k to build a standard house from one of Kalka’s own designed in 12 weeks? To be clear this is not a custom designed home! We were looking to knockdown and rebuild our current home and after several meetings with Barry Thompson (Snr New Home Consultant) we thought we has settled on one of two designs that seemed to suit our location. As we were nearing deciding on the design and costing process Barry flagged that there had been a recent cost increase passed on by Kalka management and that another one was expected soon. To minimise this cost increase we should pay the deposit and sign off on the contract ASAP. At the time I asked Barry what the increase in cost would look like and he said an increase of circa $40k. Noting this we took Barry’s advice (regrettably) and signed and paid the $8k deposit, even noting on the agreement that the house design might change. Soil testing was completed a week later and 3-4 weeks later the survey was completed. We then waited 8 weeks for construction plans and costing. A week before the plans and costings were issued I received a called out of the blue from Kalka employee Kieren Cowan to tell me that build costs were going up. We then received the concept (not construction plans) and the indictive costing which had now increased by more than $110k from the costs we used as the basis for paying the deposit and signing the contract. There is no transparency on the costing increase as there is a single line noting the build cost for the base property. $110k increase makes this build uneconomical and if we had known this earlier, we would not have signed on and paid the deposit. The only people who know/knew this was Kalka management given the house was from their standard designs and this is why we wanted our deposit less the soil and survey costs back as they have not acted honestly and with transparency.

Choosing Kalka as a contractor was the biggest mistake of my life costing us much money, effort, time and now have nothing to show for it after an entire year!!During our first consultation the sales rep told us that cost would be around $715,000. After waiting for over two months for the tender we told that the revised cost was now $915,000 and this is after taking away the pool and many other items that we felt were too expensive. We did the colour selections and then finally signed the HIA contract in October and paid the balance of 5% of the contract price. We were told that it would take about 6 weeks to get the building permit. After numerous follow ups with Kalka we were told that there as a delay in obtaining the building permit because their engineer was not qualified to sign off on the drawings!!! We were then told for sure before Christmas they would obtain in. On 31 of January Kalka issued us a delay damage notice saying that because they couldn’t get the building permit within 60 days and cost have gone up they wanted us to give them an extra $150,000! We or course said no, as this makes the project unviable and also, we had a fixed price contract for which they were supposed to have lock in their prices with sub-contractors and suppliers, plus the delay was their own fault. When we told them, we weren’t paying the money they then issued us a termination notice. So now we have paid $45,000 to Kalka, have no home and now prices have gone up and we can’t afford to build. Unfortunately, the HIA contracts are poorly written and totally in favour of the contractor. We wanted to fight them but the stress has just gotten too much. I would just warn anyone thinking of hiring Kalka to read these reviews carefully. I know that they have been doing this to many of their customers (as they actually told us during a meeting with them).It has quite honestly been one of the most difficult and disappointing experiences I've ever had. Kalka is unprofessional, untrustworthy, dishonest and should not be allowed to continue doing business. 1 star is far too generous..

I have recent built my house with Kalka, they are very transparency, show me everything in the beginning. This is my second house and I was pretty happy about it. it doesn't like my first house built by some large builder, which made me very disappoint, because the actual house is total different than the display house, every single piece cost me a lot. The kalka house is nice and easy, good quality and great design. Happy to work with them again.

Having reviewed many project building companies websites we decided to get in touch with Kalka to talk about the possibility of building our new family home in Mitchelton. We knew our block posed a few challenges having a bit of a slope and being an unusual shape, but after an initial consultation on the phone with Kalka we were assured that they specialise in sloping blocks and customising projects to meet our requirements.Our initial consultation was with a sales agent on site to look at the block and talk about our objectives for the build. We were told at the time our initial budget allocation of 650k was a bit tight because of the slope, so the sales agent went away and came back with a sales estimate of 750k with a number of allocations for 'provisional sums' regarding the site works. He said 'I know that's 100k over budget, but I'm confident those provisionals will come down - they're worst case scenarios' so we were encouraged to pay our deposit of 5k to get a more accurate cost in the form of a building tender. We agreed - also in part because we were also assured if we paid that deposit at that point we would avoid imminent price increases.We then waited 6 weeks to get our tender which to our surprise came in at 865k (an increase of another 115k) and the 'provisional worst case scenario' amounts in most instances had multiplied x 3. At this point we started to look for alternative scenarios to reduce cost - all the while working with Kalka to do so, however we found them incredibly slow to make updates to our tender, on multiple occasions missing the return dates by weeks. To be honest they seemed completely unwilling to work with us to find a more cost effective solution - even after suggesting they could build it on posts and taking another 4 weeks to update the tender the price actually increased again.Finally realising that time was running out within our agreed 90 day fixed tender price we agreed to the build and costs and asked for a few tweaks to the tender so that we could sign-off on something we were happy with. At this point our tender wasn't returned within the last week of the 90 days because 'the system was down' and coincidentally was returned 2 days after the 90 day period with an increase to the base house price of 75k (because we had exceeded the 90 day fixed price guarantee).This now took the build to almost $1m which made it completely unviable for us but also for the value of the completed property. We have asked repeatedly, patiently and politely for our 5k deposit to be returned because we felt we had purposefully delayed by Kalka and deliberately tricked into an ultimately time consuming and costly exercise which yielded nothing but frustration and heartache for our family. In all the process took 5 months, cost us 5k and we are back to square one.Unfortunately the marketing story on the Kalka website and social media do not match the experience as a customer. We found Kalka to be unresponsive, unhelpful and untrustworthy. Having delayed our final tender (and knowing that it would also increase by another 75k before we received it) we were even encourage to make another stage payment of 7.5k and book flights to Brisbane from Sydney to do our interior design consultation!I would strongly advise anyone considering working with Kalka to think again. And certainly not to part with any money before they receive a tender. It has quite honestly been one of the most difficult and disappointing experiences I've ever had.

LACK OF RESPECT and DAMANGING NEIGHBOURING PROPERTYKALKA is building a house next door, from last six months we are unable to use our pool and our alfresco BECAUSE it is filled with mud because of all the mud and water gushing into our property from their build. Our pool is filled with the mud. we have been patiently following up with them and owner of the property to get that fixed and still no solution and they dont show any urgency and keep giving reason about COVID. Honestly guys you can hire people and address this issue with urgency. Whole of australia hasnt stopped workingEntire summer we are unable to use the pool and spend lot of money on pouring chemicals into the pool.I thought Kalka is reputed company but they are not. Complete disregard for the neighbor and their property.HERSTON

My husband and I recently built our dream home with Kalka and love it. From design, interior selection to final build we have worked closely with the team to get the end product we are thrilled with. And having one main contact who was overseeing our build was really helpful when we had questions or anything we wanted Updates on. We will definitely be using them again if we decide to Build.