Twelve homes a year. On purpose.
Norde Homes is a small builder by design, not by circumstance. Twelve builds a year is the number that lets Marco stand on every site, lets decisions get made once, and lets us keep the trades who actually care. It is a constraint we chose, and it is the reason the homes perform.
What you give up with a volume builder
Nothing about a large builder is dishonest. The problem is arithmetic. A builder running hundreds of homes a year cannot put an experienced pair of eyes on each one, so the work gets split up. You meet a salesperson, hand over to a drafter, then to a contract administrator, then to a site supervisor carrying twenty jobs at once.
Every handover is a place where the reasoning behind a decision gets lost. The person who understood why your living areas face north is not the person specifying the glazing, and neither of them is on site the morning the bricklayer has a question.
That is the mechanism behind most of what goes wrong in a build. Not bad intent. Just distance between the decision and the person making it.
Lombardy St, Woodlands. 9.4 stars on an established block. Twelve builds a year is what makes this level of attention possible. See the project.
What twelve builds a year actually buys you
A small builder is not simply a large builder with fewer staff. The size changes what is possible in the process, and that is where the difference shows up in the finished home.
Marco is on every site
Not a supervisor with twenty jobs. The director who priced your build and sat in the design meetings is the person the trades call. Fifteen years of building in Perth, and a Dutch carpentry background before that.
Decisions get made once
A small book of work means the reasoning travels with the project. Nobody has to reconstruct why a wall was detailed a certain way, because the person who decided it is still there.
The same trades, repeatedly
Twelve builds a year is enough to keep good trades busy and few enough to be worth their while. Consistency in who does the work is most of what consistency in the work looks like.
Time in the design phase
We are thinking about construction and budget while the drawings are still moving. That is the only point where changing something is cheap, and most of the value in a custom home is decided there.
Your drawings stay yours
There is a pattern in the high performance end of the Perth market that catches people out. You engage a designer, spend a serious sum on drawings, state your budget clearly, and then find the design only comes with a short list of builders attached. By the time you see a real price, you are committed.
Floreat. The kind of detail that gets decided in the design phase, while changing it is still cheap. How design and build works.
We do it the other way around. We are thinking about construction method and budget from the first design conversation, so the number you hear early is a number that survives.
And if you design with us and build with someone else, you take the drawings with you. Norde releases copyright on the design. We would rather build the home we designed, and we will make the case for it, but you are not locked in by a document you paid for.
It works in the other direction too. If you already have plans from an architect or designer, we will review them for thermal performance and buildability first, then build from them. That is our build only service, and it is how several of our homes started.
See how the two routes compare on our approach page.
Does a small builder cost more?
On the contract, usually yes. We do not have the buying power of a builder placing hundreds of orders a year, and we are not trying to win on price.
What you are paying for is attention and performance. A passive solar home with reverse brick veneer typically runs around 10 to 20 per cent above a custom designed 7 star home, and that premium goes into the fabric rather than the finishes. It comes back through much lower running costs and a home that stays comfortable without working at it.
Our projects generally start around $700,000. If your budget is below that, we would rather say so early than take you through a process that was never going to fit. That honesty is easier when you are not chasing volume.
Common questions about building with a small builder
The questions we hear most from people deciding between a boutique builder and a volume one.
Around twelve. It is a deliberate ceiling rather than a capacity limit. Twelve is the number that lets Marco be on every site and keeps the same trades on our jobs, and both of those show up in the finished home.
No. Norde releases copyright on the design, so if you decide to build with someone else you take the drawings with you. We would obviously rather build the home we designed, and we will make that case, but you are not tied to us by a document you paid for.
Yes. We review them for thermal performance and buildability first, because that is where a high performance home is usually won or lost, then build from them. Several of our homes started that way. See build only for how it works.
It is a fair question and the honest answer is that the risks are different rather than larger. Norde is a registered WA builder, BRN 14483, an HIA member, and has been building in Perth for fifteen years. What you trade is the scale of a large organisation. What you gain is that the person accountable for the build is the person doing it.
Longer than a volume builder, because the book of work is small on purpose. The design phase is also where we spend more time than most, since that is the only point where changes are cheap. If timing matters, raise it in the first conversation.
Across the Perth metropolitan area, with most projects in the City of Stirling, Town of Cambridge, City of Vincent and City of Melville. Our own office is in Balcatta. If your block is further out, ask, because the answer depends on the site rather than the postcode.
A few of our homes
View all projects
Tell us what you have in mind
Share your block and how you want to live. The first conversation is free, with no obligation, and you speak with Marco, the builder, not a salesperson.
- 8 to 10 star NatHERS performance
- Design and build, or build only
- A hands-on director on every build
Prefer to call? (08) 6188 5966
Your vision, our craft.
Build the home you've been imagining. Share what you have in mind and we'll be in touch.
Get in touch