Shirley and Steve Evans (Mangawhai, 2020)

Cogan Custome Homes were recommended to us by another certified builder we had used in the past once he knew we were starting the process of looking to build at our lifestyle property in Mangawhai. We had already spoken to a couple of builders and architects but once we spoke to Craig we were impressed with his knowledge and understanding of what we wanted. Hearing that we had not chosen the architect yet, he recommended Maxar Architecture as being a good fit with us and he bought Adam along to our first meeting.

After that initial meeting we were confident that we had a team we could trust. They had building and architectural experience at the level we wanted. Craig attended all our meetings with the architect as we nutted out the design and he was an active contributor to the ideas and always offered solutions to potential design issues. We had set the budget early on and Craig worked hard to ensure that all the design features we wanted could be included in our budget.

Craig matched his building team to our personalities and the detail required on the house build and we ended up with a fabulous crew that we trusted implicitly. They were respectful, hardworking, and exceptional builders. Simon our head builder worked hard to ensure the project came in on time and on budget and to the standard we wanted. We were probably terrible clients in that we made wee changes practically every week to some aspect, but our changes were never an issue.

The project management programme that Craig uses is excellent, it allows you to see exactly at what stage the project is at, your spend to-date and any variances to budget or design. As a consequence, we felt the project was under control at all times and that we were fully informed.

This is the third house we have built, and it has been the most fun and least stressful building experience we have ever had. We absolutely love our new home, to us it is exactly what we wanted. We think it is an excellent design that has been built to an exceptionally high standard. Craig and his team know what they are doing.