How to choose a custom home builder in Melbourne: four questions to ask beyond the portfolio

What should I actually assess when choosing a custom home builder?

You are about to spend a long stretch of time with people you may have only just met, on a project that is likely to be one of the largest investments you will make. Most advice on how to choose a custom home builder in Melbourne reads the same way: Look at the portfolio. Check the registration. Ask for references. Compare the quotes. All of it is sensible, but none of it shows you how the project will be run.

What matters most to the outcome is harder to see. Whether the builder is financially sound. Whether the price you sign is the price you pay. Whether the workflow is disciplined, the quality is checked, and the team stays with you. These are worth asking about early, because a portfolio cannot show them.

Doug MacLeod, Founder and Director of Latitude 37, holds a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours and has led the business since 2006. Our view is that building a custom home well is as much a project management discipline as a craft. If you want the short answer, our page on how to choose a custom home builder gives it. This is the longer one: four questions, and what useful answers tend to include. These questions help you understand how a builder operates beyond its portfolio and marketing language. Consider the answers alongside completed homes, recent client experiences and the way quality is checked throughout construction.

What a portfolio can and cannot tell you

A portfolio shows a builder’s best finished work. References are chosen by the builder. Registration is a minimum requirement rather than a measure of how a business runs. A quote reflects the information available on the day it was prepared.

None of that makes them unhelpful. They answer a different question. They tell you what a builder can produce, not what working with that builder will be like.

And it is a long relationship. The pace before you commit is yours. Some people take years to prepare, others a few months. After that come months of design, pricing and approvals, and construction itself generally runs 10 to 18 months, depending on the size and complexity of the home, site access and slope. Latitude 37 builds across six Melbourne regions, from the Inner North and East through to the Mornington Peninsula, and over a project of that length, the questions below are the ones we would encourage you to ask any builder.

Is the builder financially strong, and how certain is the price?

Financial strength belongs at the top of any builder assessment. In recent years, a number of Australian building companies have gone out of business, some with homes still under construction. When you commit to a builder for a custom home, you need confidence in its ongoing solvency, financial responsibility, and long-term reliability. There is a second financial question too, and it is worth keeping separate: how certain is the price of your home?

No single measure guarantees a builder’s future solvency, but longevity is one of the clearest signals of financial strength. A builder that has traded through several market cycles, including the difficult ones, has shown it can manage its finances responsibly over time. Latitude 37 has done so since 2006. For more than 20 years, we have operated from a position of financial strength, supported by disciplined financial management and a conservative approach to debt.

Ask any builder how long it has operated, how it has managed through tight markets, and how it plans its workload. Builders that take on work unevenly can fall into a feast-or-famine cycle, with stretches of heavy workload followed by too little work and pressure on cash flow. At Latitude 37 we plan a set number of site starts each year and deliberately balance our workflow, so each project receives the resources and management attention it needs. Consider longevity alongside evidence assessed by others, such as the awards below, and alongside how clearly a builder answers these questions.

Awards offer an external view. Housing awards recognise excellence in design, client experience, construction quality, and delivery, while Professional Builder awards also assess the business behind the homes, including management practices, financial discipline, ethics, and client communication. The Housing Industry Association runs such a category for medium-sized builders, and Latitude 37 has won the HIA Professional Medium Builder award six times, in 2014, 2015, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023, and was a finalist in 2024 and 2025.

On the second, ask what the price includes, when it becomes fixed, what can legitimately change it, and who carries the risk if construction costs rise. At Latitude 37 you sign a fixed-price building contract based on resolved documentation and selections, with any exclusions set out clearly in the contract. Before you sign, our Technical Manager and Quality Manager work through the coordination and technical questions in the office rather than leaving them to be discovered on site. That preparation is what allows the price to be fixed with confidence.

Comparing quotes: when a lower price is not what it seems

For an equivalent home, specification, service and construction quality, reputable builders are buying labour and materials from broadly the same market. There is no hidden source of dramatically cheaper trades or materials. So if one proposal is materially lower than another, the useful question is why.

• Is it the same specification and fitout?
• Is the same construction detail included below ground and behind the plaster?
• Is there an equivalent level of project management and quality assurance, including independent third-party inspections?
• Are important items excluded, left as allowances or still unresolved?
• Is the margin one the builder can sustain for the whole project?

A price that looks low at proposal stage can rise once allowances are firmed up and missing items are added back, often at a point where you are too far in to change course. That is not true of every lower quote, but it is worth testing before you commit. At Latitude 37 we would rather give you a realistic figure early, even when it is not the lowest one on the table.

Who stays with your project, and who checks the work?

Ask who your main contact will be at each stage. Ask when you will meet the person running your site. Ask what happens if a key person is on leave or moves on, and how the reasoning behind a design decision reaches the people building it.

At Latitude 37, your Client Experience Lead is your continuous contact from your design engagement through to handover. Your Site Manager is introduced in our office after the building contract is signed and before construction begins, and from then on the Site Manager and Client Experience Lead are your main contacts. If you would like to meet your Site Manager before the contract, that can be arranged. When a stage of the build is reached, your Site Manager calls you and follows up with photos, so you always know where things stand.

Behind them, the Construction Manager meets each week with the Client Experience Lead and Site Manager to discuss every project in detail, and visits every site personally each week. Our in-house model is an important reason this works. Our Designers, Interior Designers, Client Experience and Construction teams remain connected throughout the project. Where design and interior design are outsourced, those consultants have often largely completed their engagement before construction begins. Keeping these disciplines in-house means design intent, your decisions and construction issues are discussed directly by the people who know your project, and it gives far greater continuity if an individual team member changes.

Quality is checked in layers. Before construction, our in-house Quality Manager checks every project file at a series of hold points, and you review and approve the full contract documents before we proceed to contract. On site, a multi-stage quality control process combines Site Manager checks, verification by a Senior Site Manager or the Construction Manager, and independent third-party quality inspections at key points. Every defect is logged with a photo and description, and each rectification needs two sign-offs before it is closed.

Whichever builder you are considering, ask how its checks are carried out, who reviews them, and how outstanding items are closed before work moves on.

How openly does the builder talk about budget before you commit?

Every builder will form a view on whether your site and budget can support your brief. How that conversation goes is one of the most useful indicators you will get, because it shows how the builder behaves when the honest answer may not be the one you hoped for.

At Latitude 37, the first meetings explore fit, your brief against your budget, and the constraints and opportunities of your site. Guidance at that point is necessarily broad. If there is a good fit, a Concept Design Agreement starts Concept Design, beginning with a design brief meeting with your Client Experience Lead and Designer. The concept is refined with you, and the indicative build cost that follows is a costed estimate for the built form, with allowances for the likely value of fitout and finishes to suit your brief. It is refined as the design develops. We have explained how the cost becomes known at each stage, and what actually drives the cost of a custom home, separately.

Early information can change a design for the better. At Waterfront in Patterson Lakes, the family’s original thinking included a basement. Working through the site early showed that building below ground would add complexity and cost without adding to the way the family wanted to live. Instead, the home was organised across three levels above ground, accommodating everything the brief asked for at a lower cost overall. Waterfront is a 2026 finalist in the HIA Victorian Housing Awards, in the Custom Built Home Over $6 Million category, and the story of how the whole family shaped its brief is told in our Knowledge Hub.

So ask directly what your budget will not support. “It depends” can be an honest answer. The useful follow-up is what it depends on, and how the builder will tell you when it knows.

What happens after you move in?

Ask what you receive at handover. Ask how you report an issue, who is responsible for it, and how you will be kept informed. Ask how urgent problems are handled in the first year, and what happens with issues that appear later.

At Latitude 37, every client receives our Maintenance & Warranty Guide at handover. It explains owner maintenance responsibilities, the 90-day maintenance process and how warranty matters are assessed.

Clients submit items for their 90-day maintenance inspection through our online Aftercare Request form. The Site Manager who handed over the home returns to inspect the items and coordinates any agreed rectification work. Some items are managed in conjunction with our Maintenance & Warranty partner. After the 90-day process, warranty requests are managed by that partner on Latitude 37’s behalf. The partner assesses each request, arranges inspections where required, coordinates agreed work and keeps the client informed. Issues raised after the first year can still be submitted and are assessed against the applicable warranty requirements.

For urgent issues in the first 12 months, clients have complimentary RACV Home Assist for emergency call-outs, such as a burst pipe or a lockout. RACV’s role is to make the home safe. Any further work is referred to Latitude 37 for assessment and approval, with warranty work managed through our Maintenance & Warranty partner. RACV Home Assist does not limit the client’s rights under the building contract or applicable statutory warranties. The rest of what happens after handover is on our aftercare page.

One Mount Martha client put it simply after moving in: Latitude 37 “followed up with any issues and were very supportive throughout the build.”

Four questions, then. Is the builder financially strong, and how certain is the price? Who stays with your project, and who checks the work? How openly does the builder talk about budget before you commit? What happens after you move in? They apply to Latitude 37 as readily as to anyone else. Many of the people we build for are clients who arrive through referral, sent by someone who has been through the whole process with us.