Choose a luxury home builder in Boroondara by verifying three things before you look at a single photograph: that they hold Domestic Builder – Unlimited registration, that their name is clean on the Building and Plumbing Commission's compliance and enforcement register, and that they will show you a real cost breakdown rather than a single number. Everything else — the portfolio, the showroom, the referral — tells you what a builder is capable of on a good day. These three tell you what happens on a bad one.
Below are the twelve questions we would ask if we were the client. Each one has an answer that should satisfy you and a shape of answer that should not.
1. What class of registration do you hold, and what is the number?
Victoria registers domestic builders by class. Domestic Builder – Unlimited covers all components of domestic building work. Domestic Builder – Limited covers only the specific components named on the certificate — bathroom, kitchen and laundry renovations, for example. A whole new home needs Unlimited.
Good answer: a class and a number, offered without hesitation, that you can put straight into the public register.
Weak answer: "we're fully licensed and insured." That is a sentence, not a credential.
2. Is the registration in the company's name or a person's?
Both exist, and they are not the same thing. A company holds its own registration; an individual holds theirs. Ask which entity will actually sign your contract, and check that one.
Weak answer: a number that turns out to belong to a director who is not party to your contract.
3. Have you checked me against the compliance and enforcement register — and have I checked you?
Most people check the practitioner search, see "registered," and stop. The practitioner search tells you status, what work they can do, and whether there are conditions on the registration. There is a separate register — the Compliance and Enforcement Register — that records disciplinary action, prosecutions and court outcomes, suspensions and cancellations.
Checking one and not the other is the single most common gap in homeowner due diligence in Victoria. Note also that the BPC states not every complaint, inspection or compliance activity appears on the register, so a clean record is a floor, not a guarantee.
(Step-by-step: see our guide on how to check if a builder is registered in Victoria.)
4. How many projects will you have running while mine is on site, and who is on mine every week?
At the top end this question decides your experience more than any other. A builder running fourteen jobs is running a business with a supervisor layer. A builder running four is on your site.
Good answer: a number, and a name, and what that person's week looks like.
Weak answer: "you'll have a dedicated project manager." Ask who they report to, and how many other projects that person carries.
5. Who quoted this, and will that person be accountable for it on site?
A quote prepared by an estimator who never visits the site, handed to a supervisor who never saw the quote, is how a project starts drifting in month two.
6. Can I see the cost breakdown, not the total?
A $4 million number tells you nothing. A breakdown by trade and stage tells you whether the builder has actually priced your house or scaled someone else's.
Weak answer: "we don't release our breakdown, it's commercially sensitive." Reasonable for their margin. Not reasonable for the whole document.
7. How many provisional sums are in this, and what are they worth in total?
This is the question that reorders tenders. A provisional sum is an allowance for work whose cost is not yet established; if the allowance is wrong, you pay the difference. A lower headline price carrying $400,000 of provisional sums is usually the more expensive house.
Ask for the total value of provisional sums as a percentage of the contract price, and compare that number across tenders — not the headline.
8. What is each prime cost allowance based on? Name the product.
Prime cost items are allowances for things not yet selected — tapware, appliances, stone, fixtures. On a luxury build these overrun more reliably than anything else, because the allowance is set against mid-range product and the selection is made against the real thing. If the allowance is $900 for a tap and you are specifying what you are specifying, you already know how that ends.
9. When do you get involved — before or after the drawings are finished?
Most of the cost of a custom home is locked in before a contract exists. A builder who arrives after documentation is complete can price your house but can no longer influence what it costs.
(We've written on this separately: when should a builder be involved in the design stage.)
10. What have you built in Boroondara specifically, and did any of it have a heritage overlay?
Boroondara is not generic eastern suburbs. Heritage overlays across Kew, Canterbury, Camberwell and Hawthorn change what can be demolished, what the frontage must do, and how long approval takes. Tight sites and mature trees change access, excavation and crane strategy. A builder whose work is all greenfield estates is not lying to you about their quality; they are just answering a different question than the one your site asks.
11. What contract will you use, and what is in the payment schedule?
Victorian law sets the rails and you can check them yourself. The deposit cannot exceed 5 per cent on a contract of $20,000 or more. For a contract covering all stages, progress payments are capped at base 10 per cent, frame 15 per cent, lock-up 35 per cent, fixing 25 per cent. From 1 December 2026, on contracts of $1 million or more a cost escalation clause cannot add more than 5 per cent to the price.
A schedule that front-loads past those caps is not a negotiating position.
12. What will I receive each month, and what is in it?
Ask to see a real example with another client's details removed. The difference between "we'll keep you updated" and a monthly report that reconciles to the contract sum is roughly the difference between finding out about a problem in month three and finding out in month nine.
Two questions to ask yourself, not the builder
Did they tell me anything I didn't want to hear? A builder who agrees with everything in a first meeting is either not listening or not planning to be the one who delivers it. Something in your brief is expensive, or slow, or will fight the site. Someone should have said so.
Did they turn anything down? Builders who take everything have no capacity left for the thing that goes wrong on your job.
What we do with these questions
We hold Domestic Builder – Unlimited registration (DB-U 102065). We run a small number of projects at a time so that both principals stay across every one — Kim runs site and trades directly, Abby runs contracts and cost reporting — and the person who quotes your project is accountable for it on site. Clients receive itemised cost tracking against a work breakdown and written variation control, not a verbal update on site.
If we are not the right fit for a project, we say so early. That is worth more to you than a tender.
Crave Build builds architect-led custom homes and knockdown rebuilds across Boroondara and Melbourne's inner east. This article is general information, not legal advice.