Over the weekend I had some clients talking about some friends that are building their new home via a marketing company builder. They explained the situation to me and what is happening to their friends first of all they answered an advert and the process began, they were then shown a display home built by one of the marketing company builders. The home was of reasonable standard and they were happy to go to the next step choosing a home plan then placing a deposit for pre-works. The pre-works were completed and they selected their building materials, tiles, bricks, carpet, roofing etc. They then signed a building contract and paid the 5% builder's deposit and everything was going well. The whole process took around three months then they got to meet the builder and this is where the problems started. The builder did not build the display home and they were not very happy about this because they could not look over the builders work and at this point they wanted out. Getting out was not an option without losing their deposits so they decided to dig a little further and found out the builder given to them by the marketing company was only just a registered builder and very inexperienced. In short marketing companies dressed up as builders are very deceiving and no good for anyone other than themselves and in my opinion the practice should be disallowed. We are currently in negotiations with this couple as to their next move.