Downfall of the Boom

The Housing Boom is a great and wondrous thing for many Australians who have built their wealth on the property market, while it is a great stress to many people that can never hope to afford to have a property to call their own.

My husband and I count ourselves as extremely lucky to have circumstances align in a way that - combined with hard work, made building our own home possible, even if we did have to move in the middle of nowhere to do it. No, building your own property is mostly a positive thing, however, unless you are very handy and have heaps of time up your sleeves to do things for yourself like the landscaping, lighting, and water/shed installation - your next priority would be running around like a mad chicken getting quotes from respective tradies to get things done.

I say priority - especially when it comes to landscaping, because we initially thought landscaping was something we could put off until the 6 months mark after house handover and moving in. To clarify, we are indoor people, so I thought my priorities leaned more towards doing more for the inside than out.

We have a beautiful fur family member named Lupin (who we love more than anything), who made landscaping an immediate need, being an indoor/outdoors dog.

All good, no biggy. In the past, I have relied on ServiceSeeking.com.au with very mixed results and thought I'd give them a go now. I listed details of my job and waited for some expression of interest and got 7. Fab! This was going to be easy. I texted / called / emailed all seven and...

Got 2 responses.

The others did not even bother to response further saying they are now busy, despite initially expressing interest in my job.

I soldiered on with the two that did respond:

1. Jim's Diggers (Aspley, QLD)
2. Pride Structural Landscaping & Concreting (Pimpama, QLD)

Pride Structural Landscaping after some text backwards and forwards trying to find a time for him to quote, advised that he has just landed a big job and was no longer interested.

Rxxx from Jim's Diggers did ACTUALLY made it out to the property (an all too rare occurrence) and totally charmed the socks off my dog and myself, promising the world (landscaping-wise) starting from when he would get a quote to us (he promised it within 2 days). The two days became a week, and then three weeks. Every time I called him, he was in his car and he couldn't emailed it to me, but "It is totally done, it just completely slipped my mind" (word for word his excuse every single time).

Needless to say, I stopped chasing the quote and calling him.

Next I turned to Yellowpages.com.au and started indiscriminately texting and calling to try and get Landscapers around us to come and even quote the job. Results:

7 landscapers contacted

1 landscaper willing to quote

Jxx Axxxxx from Plant A Garden came out and said the job was "simple" and talked my socks off (more than 30 minutes walking around the yard talking). Again he promised to send through a quote within a week and never did.

I will get to writing about my interactions with ServiceSeeking.com.au on this in another blog post. But the short of it is - the current housing boom has tradies feeling invincible - flooded with work and spoiled for choice. They jerk people around and wasting people's time in the process. 

Yes, I didn't expect it to be all smooth sailing, building a house and finishing off things around the house, however, the level of irresponsibility from tradies definitely leaves much to be desired including common courtesy, honesty and professionalism.