My House Build

So, I wandered out to the site the other day and took some pictures and was quite surprised to see how much progress had been made since last time I was out there. The street is actually starting to take shape. Services have been run and there is now curbs, I guess the next part will be to lay down the footpaths and bitumen.

Heres some pictures of both the street and the plot of dirt I’ve purchased.

And my plot of dirt

 

Well, now the wait begins. At this point there is just a bunch of financing to get sorted, paperwork to sign, documents for proof of various things (residence etc) to organise.

In the meantime I’ve been wandering out to the empty plot of land and watching things slowly take shape, here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.

This is from a few weeks ago

And here it looks like they have started building the street.

Pretty boring I guess, just blank bits of land and not even a street, maybe in a few weeks time it’ll get more exciting 🙂

 

If there is anything I’ve learnt over the past few weeks the most important part of building a home is research.

As with any industry there is a lot of jargon involved and dont be shy about asking people to explain what various words and terms mean.

I’ve spent a lot of time on the homeone forums and they cover almost every topic imaginable. You can connect to them from this link [http://forum.homeone.com.au/]

Finding plots of land to build on turned out ot be pretty easy, a quick google search turned up RealEstate.com.au [http://www.realestate.com.au/], this gave a sample of land sale sites in teh area, then it was a case of traveling out there, going to the land sale office and checking out the lots and prices. There was a lot of legwork to do here, but it will give you an estimate of costs for a certain area. Another thing do do is talk to builders about places selling land in the area as they will know prety much all the places that are not on the realestate.com.au site. They may also be aware of new and upcoming developments.

Once you’ve narrowed down the areas you might like to build, check out the development plans for the area. These can usually be found by a simple google search using the name as the local body council and the word “development”, if you are in Melbourne a good place to start is the Melbourne planning guide [http://planmelbourne.vic.gov.au/]

You’ll also want to select a builder, when doing this you will certainly want to do some research on them. Check with google putting in the builder name and “reviews”, many will lead to sites such as ProductReviews [http://www.productreview.com.au/]. One thing I found with builder sales people is that many of them will tell you misleading information. Ask what inclusions are available with the show home, many show homes will have had upgrades to the values of $100k or more which is why they all look so nice. It is dead easy to add an extra $50k onto the base price of a house just to get it to a basic level.

Again, on the HomeOne forums, there is a thread that lists a bunch of things people forget about when building a house, learn and memorise this list, it will become invaluable to you when talking to builders. Things to remember when building [http://forum.homeone.com.au/]

Anyway, there is a load more, Finance is also a big one, again, do research on the backing companies, read reviews and don’t forget to shop around and let them know you are shopping around. Brokers are good to talk to but be aware that they are sales people, and also know the law. Ask them what their kickback is from the various recommended lenders, legally they have to tell you.

As I remember things I’ll post them here as well in the hope someone might get some use out of all the things I’ve discovered.

Chur.

Well, I now own a block of land. Out in Saratoga, Point Cook. Put my hold deposit down and now have three days for a cool down period where I can walk away. Once this is up then everything is locked in pending finance approval.

This week I’m going to need to organise a solicitor to look over the land contract and get everything ready for finance checks for pre approval. Busy busy already and I’ve only just started.

Its amazing how painless parting with a few hundred thousand dollars is.. I even got a free bottle of water! \o/

I’ve never run a blog before so this is all a little new to me despite my computer background, but really wanted to document this adventure as it unfolds.

I must say at the moment I’m a little apprehensive as to how this will all work out and can’t stop thinking of everything that could go wrong, but if I live in constant fear of things that could happen I’d never leave the house.

Anyway, today marks the point where I will put down my hold deposit for a block of land in Point Cook and then it’s just up to the bank to tell me if they like me.