Under Construction (actually)

After we were informed by our lovely neighbors that our land had been leveled, we got word today that our piering will begin tomorrow. Its all happening faster than expected!

So after a quick chat with our bosses, we have the been given the go-ahead to be onsite to oversee the process which is suggested by the builder.

We went out to visit the block on saturday, and it was still untouched (although there were red pegs).

Then after the ground got leveled yesterday:

Hopefully tomorrow we can put some pics of our newly laid piers!

Our land has settled

Its official, we now actually own our block after settlement passed on Tuesday.

Block party TBA... :-)

Electrical and land prices

On Friday we ventured out to Newcastle to do our final electrical selections for the house.

This covered, lights, switching, power points, air-con, TV points, phone points, garage fittings, home theater equipment, alarms etc.

Craig was a great help, he had a good knowledge of everything, and being an interior decorator, he had some great idea's. We ended up getting standard light fittings to all areas of the house, that we will replace with down-lights after hand-over to save money. Craig suggested we put in standard lights instead of the pre-wireing for the downlights, so at least the alignment of the lights would be completed before we moved in. We got the basic home theater package which includes many TV outlets, speaker wiring, extra phone and pay tv points and of course a TV aerial. Each item of the home theater pack gets credited back if you dont use it.

Wiring up the light switches was great fun. The application they use makes it very easy to choose what light gets switched from where. We also ended up with an extra aircon zone, so we can make sure we only cool or heat the areas of the house we will be in.

In other news, the prices of land at the ponds has gone through the roof. In some cases, the same size block of land is up 40-60 thousand dollars. Amazing since we only bought a block late last year!

Registered!

Our land registered today!

Now we move on to the next stage, finance and eternal debt :)

We also have our contract from McDonald Jones to sign, its massive and we are going to take our time going through it, making sure everything is correct.

Colour selections and upgrades

We arrived at 9:30 am sharp for our colour appointment, near maitland, a far drive from our sydney home. We were greeted with the wrong names and corrected the colour consultant accordingly. We started going through the motions, and she appeared to have no correct information on us at all! - what actually happened is that because we arrived earlier, she thought we were somebody else, who was due to come in at 9:30 to make a quick colour change to their roof.

Anyway, we cleared all that up, and the other couple arrived to make their change, as their council rejected their plans because of their roof colour.

Anyway, we were kept waiting for over an hour while this mystery couple decided to change EVERYTHING. This did give us the chance to have a quick look over the selection studio, for our tiles and carpet choices.

We had a few selections picked out, and finally the colour consultant came out to help us. We went through each detail one by one, and I think we ended up with very good selections. She was very professional, and told us she came from a tiling background, so her eye for colour matching was very good.

Our exterior colours are windsprey for the roof, and a combination of shale grey for the other features (such as gutters, downpipes etc). The outside brick is Sorbetto from PGH bricks. We had gone out to PGH bricks the weekend prior, and were kind of disappointed with what was on offer that we could choose from.

To upgrade the bricks to a different range, was in the region of $3000+. A bit too much, so we went for the next best thing from our range.

'Bag and paint' was included in our original quote, so we were able to select a nice rusty red colour as a feature to our facade (see below with the large rectangle window).

As a side note: One of the reasons we chose this facade, is that there is actually extra room in the front bedroom, including a desk as part of the impressions package.

There were a few hooray's and disappointments during the colour selections. Silly things like pop-up plugs for the bathroom basin's are extra at $40 ea. The standard door handles are really, really bad. We will be upgrading those when we move in! :)

On the upside, our flooring and insulation was over-quoted, so we ended up saving nearly $1000 on the original quote. We upgraded the colour of our garage door to windspray (not standard colour, who knows why?) for $450. We upgraded the front door handle, as the original is rather poor and unattractive.

The main interior colour is kind of a very light and subtle gray colour to match the tiles and kitchen.

Picking the kitchen colours was really fun, I arrived with a dulux brochure of a kitchen I loved, and we managed to match it to something similar. I cant remember the exact colours picked, but its a darker kitchen, contrasting with a light floor tile. Very nice!

We were offered many kitchen upgrades, different handles, pot drawers, microwave etc. We declined them all, we were happy with what we got in the base and impressions upgrade package, and we stuck to our budget.

We were also impressed that we were able to select more than one laminex colour for our kitchen, so our floating bench is a dark express colour, which matches the dark woodgrain we picked for our cupboards.

An honorable mention must be made to Anna's mum. She helped us greatly during the oodles of choices we had to pick from.

What was really funny is that Mr Bill McDonald (owner) himself, came around and was offering his staff Flu vaccinations. As a Joke, Anna's mum said "I'll get one", and before we know it, she was whisked away from the owner of MDJ and got a flu shot. Funny indeed :)

One other disappointment, is that we were expecting our house to be based on the NEW plan as promised (they changed it a little after building the display home) - But that was not the case. No major problem here I guess, but they did tell us it would not be a problem to upgrade plans at the same price.

I am looking forward to our electrical selections, we have allocated $5000 for electrical's, and I hope to push that as far as possible. We already know that downlights are charged at $180 EACH, although alternatively, they can make the holes and do the wireing for around 50-70 each. I think we will take that option!

We are still waiting for our land to register, and that should happen within the next few weeks. Then we will be sacrificing our salary's to the big bad bank.... you know, for the rest 30 years or so, give or take... :)

Purchasing our block

Purchasing the block seemed easier than ever - but a few things first up.

Depending on where you are buying land, the land might only 'register' much later. For instance, our block is nowhere near being completed. The road is not done, there are no street lights, enterences, power connections etc. The blocks of land get snapped up way before they are ready to use.

To buy a piece of 'unregistered' land at the ponds is simple.

1. Put down a $300 depost to say 'Its yours' (this is where we are up to)
- All you need to do this is the money, your address and your solicitors details.

2. In 28 days time, you will need to put down a 5% deposit and exchange contracts with your land vendor.

3. Thats it until the council registers the land (march in our case)

So what do you get before it registers? In essence, you get time. We now have time to find the best house deal, to save up a little more, and to research our dream home and how to fit that into our budget.

Oh and thanks to the government we got a free hand powered torch and a natural wax candle? good to see those tax dollars at work...

Land, Land, Land- It don't come cheap.

Here is a bit of background to our land purchase.

After looking at house's in thousands of Sydney suburbs we could afford a 1.2 room house in woop woop that was at least 50 years old. So we looked down the path of building a house.
7 months ago we went to Homeworld- We loved every second house and were ready to move in. As soon as we started talking to the sales rep all was not as it seemed. The first question- Were are you looking at building? Have you got finance? what size will your land be? - all questions we could not yet answer.

What areas of sydney could we afford land and still be able to build a house and not live in a tent. Could we still get to work from this land? or would we need to leave 4 hours before sun up? Land seemed to be the most important factor..

After the depressing saga that is realestate.com - we decided to go out to The ponds, which we had looked at briefly before. The Ponds is a suburb located north west of sydney, close to homeworld, where large residential and commercial developments are occurring. We made our way to the land office where we were met by nice lady.

The lady spent a bit of time going through what the ponds is all about. Just in a brief summary, the ponds is a new suburb about an hour from the CBD of Sydney, free from all the community fee's that typical estates have. The land is affordable, from about 265K to 310K (expected to rise with further releases) Instantly, we were attracted to the area. There are new schools, shops, community centres, sports fields, cycling tracks - you name it.

We were shown three blocks in particular, two smaller 13 metre x 30 metre and a large corner block. Prices at 260 for the smaller blocks and 270 for the corner.

However there were several problems with the corner block. The ponds has placed some restrictions regarding facades and other dimensional limitations to help preserve the look and feel of the community. Later on - we would find that hardly any builders could cater for the strict requirements, or could for much extra cost. Needless to say we ditched the corner block!

So around homeworld and the ponds we went, talking to every builder in sight. We narrowed down some builders based on their websites, community forums and some blogs others had written.

Problem.

13m x 30m blocks at the ponds are virtually useless. Most of the designed would not fit or meet the building requirements. We could possible get away with a two storey house but simply did not want to spend that sort of moolah. Disappointed after a long hard day of walking up and down the display villages, we wondered into AV Jennings, a builder whose house we were really impressed with.

There we met a lovey staff member. She tried to cut and shape the house to make it fit on the small block of land we were looking at - but it was hopeless - the design would not fit how we liked it. Not discouraged, she slipped us a number for another land office, selling land at the opposite end of the ponds, called Kalina. We raced over and had a lovely long discussion about the area. There were 5 blocks left, two that fell in our price range. A 15 x 30 metre block for $280k and a slightly larger 15 x 32 metre block for $285k.

Being first home owners, we though that the cheaper block would suite our needs, being able to put that extra $5k into the house and finishes. The gentlemen kindly walked us to the block, and explained everything! I wont go into too much detail, but some things you never think of. Connecting the sewers, what kind of concrete slab needs to be laid, how the storm water system works. All those things that could end up costing you thousands if you bought the wrong block. The land office closed at 5pm that day, but we ended up saying our goodbyes at 5:45pm - that's service!

The next morning we raced back in to the office to buy the BIGGER block of land. We decided overnight that having the extra 2m at the rear fence could be really beneficial. Unfortunately, another couple had spotted it before us, so we ended up with our original land.

And so be bought it! our very own piece of Australia. Our own sand and soil.