ive just finished building which only took 10.5 months from purchasing land to handover...some builders are a lot more efficient than others, with systems in place to make them run like well oiled machines...the only downfall with the builder i went through is that you could'nt make many changes to the plan, which really didnt bother us because the house was a good size, good layout, well spec'd for the money it cost us.
Also, we do experience delays in perth building because of the resouce boom taking all of our labour. Its just not possible to get good, skilled tradesmen to build the ever increasing backlog of contracted homes. This also drives up prices as the existing tradesmen expect rate increases, afterall they want a slice of the pie too!
The best time to buy or build is always going to be today...prices wont fall as a whole...they will just correct themselves, as they did 3 years ago. the severity and length of the price correction wont be as bad as most homeowners think, and it certainly wont be wont be significant enough for people who cant afford to get into the market now, to all of a sudden get into the market. I suppose the people to mostly benifit will be people who have strong finances to snap up a bargain from someone who has massively overstretched themselves.
These are just my opinions...some might disagree