21 Mths so far for council approval

Any ideas how I can put a rocket up Council and our builders?

March 2020 we first put our application into Council. Still waiting on final approval!! At this point it’s hard to tell if it’s Council being painful and slow, incompetent Certifier and/or builder or, most likely, all of the above.

I just want my house and to be able to stop renting!!

Knox Council in Melbourne if that makes a difference.

So demoralising to see so many places sell, get knocked down and rebuilt around us while we’re still waiting… Not to mention we signed weeks before the grant was announced so don’t even get that…

We have a building broker of sorts working for us and they seem to think whoever subdivided the block cut corners and we are now paying for that. I certainly see why we are the third ones to try and build here…

Someone tell me it will be ok and all worthwhile…

Hey banjodan
Sorry Dan, Sounds like you are at the arse end of the list, that's going nowhere, where your builder has taken on too much work. Furthermore if you have applied for the covid home owners grant.
(I'd say you're also screwed, and there would be tens of thousands more like you.)
It's all well and good the government has extended the timeframe but some builders are abusing the extensions, dragging out the slab down ( contract start and Grant handover to owners) and Gouging Battlers for a Hundred grand extra on increased contract variations .

OT, I met yesterday on site with one who stands to loose $40K Grant + $30K Deposit =$70K, if they cancel the contract and go elsewhere? I ask why didn't the government foresee this happening?
Builders keeps asking for variations and additional money to sort out their
Under croft Engineering and the cost increases don't stop there.
They are claiming the owners independent designer (design broker) got the under croft design wrong, by not getting the full engineering done earlier, hence the delays and price increases are now the owners fault. How so?
I inspected the additional retaining engineering required yesterday... it was builders BS...
There was nothing I could say to quell the clients anger....
Anyway goodluck

Wow that sucks! We’re pretty well stuck with our builder but I think we’re nearly there. Luckily so far our builder hasn’t tried to hit us with price increases but we have had to pay a lot more for drainage engineers, landscaping above and beyond what we planned, etc.

We never qualified for the grant as we signed our contract before it was ever a fart in Scomo’s head so at least we don’t have that pressure.