Guide · Residential · Choosing a builder
How to choose the best home builders in Perth.
Five checks that separate the home builders Perth Australia has plenty of into the ones worth briefing, from licences and insurance through to the contract clause that decides most disputes.
GPD Group · WA Builder Licence BC104702 · Updated 2026
Choosing a builder is the largest purchasing decision most people make outside buying the house itself, and it is usually made on the least information. Three quotes, a display home visit, a gut feeling about who seemed decent on the phone.
There are five checks that separate the home builders Perth Australia has plenty of into the ones worth briefing and the ones worth walking away from. None of them take long. All of them are easier before you sign than after.
Short answer
Verify the licence with the state regulator, confirm the insurance is current, look at completed work rather than renders, read the contract’s variations clause before the glossy pages, and check that the person quoting the job is the person who will run it.
01 · Credentials
Check licences and insurance.
This is the five-minute check almost nobody does, and it is the one that matters most.
Verify the licence yourself
Western Australia’s building services regulator maintains a public register of licensed builders. Search the name and the number rather than taking a website’s word for it. A number printed in a footer proves nothing on its own.
Check whose name it is in
A licence held personally by the person running your job behaves differently to one held by a company with staff turnover. Ask who the licence belongs to, and whether that person will be on your site.
Public liability and workers’ compensation
Both should be current, and a builder should produce certificates without hesitating. If producing them takes a week, that tells you something about how the paperwork side of the job will run.
Statutory home warranty insurance
Mandatory in WA on residential work over $20,000, taken out by the licensed builder and in place before site start. If a builder suggests working around it, stop there.
Ask about the trades too
Most builders subcontract some trades. Ask which ones, and whether those trades are licensed. A builder who answers that question plainly is telling you how they run everything else.
02 · Reputation
Read reviews and testimonials properly.
Most home builders in Perth, Australia point you at a review page. Reviews are useful, but not in the way most people use them. A five-star average across forty reviews tells you less than one detailed account of a job that went wrong and how the builder handled it.
Read the negative ones first. Every builder who has done enough work has an unhappy client somewhere. What you are looking for is whether the response was defensive or practical, and whether the complaint is about the building or about the communication. Communication complaints repeat. Building complaints are often one-offs.
Be sceptical of volume without detail. A wall of short, glowing, similarly worded reviews posted close together is worth less than three specific ones that name the job, the suburb and the problem that came up.
Better than reviews
Ask for reference contacts from completed jobs and actually ring them. A builder who will hand over a phone number is making a much stronger claim than one who links to a review page. Ask the referee what went wrong and how it got resolved, because something always does.
03 · Evidence
View past projects, not renders.
A portfolio of finished photography proves a builder can hire a photographer. Four questions get you closer to what they can actually deliver.
That last one is where most builders bend. A builder who tells you they have done less of something than you assumed is more trustworthy than one who claims everything. You want the answer that costs them something to give.
04 · The contract
Understand building contracts.
Nearly every dispute is decided by a document signed before anyone was arguing. Four clauses do most of the work.
Lump sum or cost plus
A lump sum against a line-item scope puts pricing risk on the builder. Cost plus puts it on you. Both are legitimate, but only one should be described as a fixed price.
Provisional sums and allowances
Every allowance is a number somebody has guessed on your behalf. Read those lines and price them realistically before signing. This is the single highest-value hour you will spend.
The variations clause
Variations by signed change order only, with no verbal instructions. If a contract allows a verbal, it also allows an invoice you never agreed to.
Programme and progress claims
Dates in calendar weeks, and payments tied to defined stages rather than dates on a calendar. Vague staging is how a job ends up paid ahead of where it actually is.
If a contract has terms you have not seen before, or the job is commercial, get legal advice before signing rather than after something goes wrong. Our guide on when to hire construction lawyers covers where that pays for itself.
05 · Our position
Why GPD Group is a trusted choice.
Applying the same checklist we would apply to any home builders in Perth, Australia, including the part that does not flatter us.
The licence is held personally
WA Builder Licence BC104702, held by Luke in his own name since 2023, against ABN 22 668 388 056. He came through a carpentry apprenticeship at sixteen before taking the licence out. Public liability and workers’ compensation current, WHS system aligned to AS/NZS 4801.
Twenty-two jobs, real values, named clients
Delivered as head contractor between 2023 and 2025, from $7,500 up to a $750,000 concrete remediation programme at the Synergy power station in Kwinana. Work delivered for Synergy, Tomra, WARRRL, Shire of Ashburton, Lease Equity and Macmahon Services. Reference contacts available on request.
One contact, start to finish
No sales-rep intake and no triage filter. The builder reads every brief, quotes the work, runs the site and answers the phone afterwards. Twelve months of direct aftercare from handover on every job.
Contracts we would sign ourselves
HIA-standard lump-sum contracts against a line-item scope, allowances stated in dollars, variations by signed change order only. Statutory home warranty insurance arranged and paid before site start.
The part that does not flatter us
Most residential work to date has been renovations, extensions and government staff housing, including a $400,000 Shire of Ashburton programme and a $320,000 structural extension in Coolbinia. New-home and modular delivery sit within our licence. If you are planning a new build, talk to us early and we will give you a straight answer about whether we are the right fit.
Next step
Our home builders Perth page sets out the process, the design approach and how we work alongside architects. For delivery paths and price bands, see new home builds.
Want a straight answer on your build?
Send the suburb, the block and roughly what you are planning. The builder reads every brief himself and comes back inside one business day, including the version where we are not the right fit.
GPD Group · WA Licence BC104702 · ABN 22 668 388 056 · info@gpdgroup.org
