Browse Forums Building A New House Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 181Jun 15, 2015 7:08 pm Hi Donna, We haven't settled on the land yet, we basically paid our $1000 on Saturday and are awaiting our contracts. This is the first home we have ever brought or built and was wondering how the contracts work with respect to the banks approval - did you guys sign the contracts and pay the deposits (10% land & 5% building costs) up front and then get the banks approval when it came time to settle the land? Ours settles in October so i am obviously nervous paying out $x amount deposit and then not know for 100% whether the bank will lend until october rolls around and the mortgage gets drawn down on. Obviously we have pre-approval for the amount we need, but as i work in risk and compliance i am scared to hand over the money without the banks big tick of approval ! Cheers, Chris. Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 182Jun 15, 2015 8:12 pm Hi Chris, We are also first home buyers and it appears to be best practice to collect 10% and 5% deposit for land and construction, respectively. In our case, the 10% for the land has been put in a trust account and at the end, when you settle on the land, you will receive your half of the interest earned. However, the 5% for the construction contract does not go to any trust account and directly into Rawson's pocket. Last year, before we signed the contracts, we applied for a loan approval to ensure that a bank would be able to provide us the funds based on our finances and the proposed property. In this way, we minimised the risk that a bank would not unconditionally approve the loans. Welcome to the estate, if you guys end up signing the contracts. There are many positive attributes of this estate, which have been discussed earlier here in this threat. Frank Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 183Jun 16, 2015 9:47 am Hi all and welcome to everyone who has recently joined the thread! Wow Sneha, we are your neighbours in Lot 70! So great that we could pre-meet our neighbours on this forum! Chris - we are also first home buyers and I also work in risk management so I understand where you're coming from. Like Frank, we sought pre-approval based on our finances and the H&L package price before signing our contracts. I also asked the loan manager at the bank about when we should apply for unconditional approval and if the pre-approval was a good indicator that we would receive the unconditional loan approval. She said that, if our financial situation hadn't changed, then we should be ok. But I suggest you speak to your financial institution (or broker). Good luck with it all! Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 184Jun 16, 2015 10:40 am Hi Sneha and Chris Welcome to the forum! Its really nice to get to meet all our new neighbours on this forum and talk about similar issues we are all having and being able to provide advice. We drove around Alex Avenue last weekend and there is a lot of construction going on around the area. By the time our homes are ready the whole place is going to look superb! We went to the park on Glory street with our kids and they were loving it playing soccer and all ..... Just cant wait for our homes to be built now! Mridu Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 185Jun 16, 2015 7:28 pm Thanks everyone for your comments and advice, it has helped put our mind at easy a bit. Cannot wait now until we can sign the contracts ! Once everyone moves in BBQ at ours Lot 203 ! Chris. Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 186Jun 19, 2015 2:58 pm Just popped into the block and bumped into Chris and Angus. Lovely to meet you guys! Looking forward to meeting everyone else. Perhaps we should organise a get together done time. Donna Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 187Jun 21, 2015 12:37 pm Hi Everyone! We also paid our $1000 deposit last Saturday and now have to exchange our contracts by 28th of June. They said they give you 2 weeks to finalise everything, however our solicitor only received our papers from Rawson on Friday, which actually gives us only one week and makes any amendments (should we need/want them) impossible. Can anyone please share your experience, did it work the same way for you? Thank you! Anna&Alex Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 188Jun 21, 2015 12:53 pm Hi Anna and Alex, Great to see you guys here. I have just checked the historical dates and confirm that we also only had 2 weeks time. Neala even had to give us a couple of days of extension of time as we changed our solicitor in the beginning. The contract review by our solicitor took just about 2 days, depending on their work load. The amendments requested were answered within the day by Neala, she is very efficient with her work. I believe your time frame is manageable, but might be necessary to apply for EOT to get the contracts clean to Rawson. You just need to be at the ball with your solicitor... What lot did you end up getting? We took Lot 73 from the second stage. Good luck guys and looking forward meeting you! Frank Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 189Jun 21, 2015 2:31 pm Thanks for a warm welcome and for your reply Frank! We decided to go for 303-2, corner of Apollo st and Beacon drive. And you're right, it's probably worth calling Helen to talk about extension. Looking forward to meeting you too! Anna&Alex Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 190Jun 22, 2015 1:24 pm Hi Anna & Alex, Welcome to the Aurora Estate forum! We went over the 2 weeks but Rawson gave us the extension because they were happy that we were actively working with our solicitor to resolve any issues in the contract. Have a chat with Helen she will understand your situation and will help you. What dates have Rawon provided you for the completion of your home? And are the new released homes in the estate all sold or still in the process? Mridu. Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 191Jun 23, 2015 7:43 pm Thanks Donna, my wife and I enjoyed meeting you too. We cannot wait until meeting the rest of you either. Welcome Anna & Alex, we saw you in the sales office when we were paying our deposit and wondered whether you also decided to purchase - Congratulations! Chris and Agnieszka (Aggie). Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 192Jun 23, 2015 8:47 pm Hi guys! Well, we went through our contracts with our solicitor and she requested an extension already - there are some corrections to be made, the main one is that they mixed up unit 1 and unit 2 of our lot Congratulations to you too, Chris and Agnieszka! It was nice to see you in the office! We were told that the land registration will be in October, settlement in November, completion - October 2016. Anna & Alex Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 194Jun 25, 2015 6:05 pm I have news! I am extremely excited to advise that there are now fences around each of the blocks in the estate! ie. 3 huge fences in total, one for each block. (The other fence is still there at the moment) Ok, so I'd rather there weren't any fences at all, but new fences means there is actually some activity happening which is awesome. Couldn't take any pics as it was dark, but does anyone know how to post pictures so I can put some up later? I can't seem to figure it out. Donna Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 195Jun 25, 2015 10:02 pm Thank you for the great news Donna! We although have a question that makes us concerned a lot. I talked to the financial advisor/mortgage broker today and he said that most of the banks recently changed their policies and do not approve approve loans for house and land packages like ours, when you are obliged to build with the certain builder (Rawson in our case). According to him they only approve if you bought your land separately and can choose any builder, so if one goes bankrupt you can still build with another one and the land is still yours. Really need your advise guys, did anyone hear anything like that? Did anyone have any problems getting a loan recently? All this sounds pretty weird to me because house and land packages are a huge market, and there are a lot of people involved. Although we obviously don't want to sign the contract, pay the deposit and then lose it because we didn't get the loan. Appreciate your advice. Anna&Alex Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 196Jun 26, 2015 7:26 am Hi Guys, That sounds stressful. I hadn't heard about the impact to house and land packages but knew the banks had pulled in the reins a bit. I have sent an email to my broker to ask if he would mind commenting, so hopefully he'll get back to me today. I would suggest speaking to your solicitor to find out exactly what would happen under the contract if Rawson went bust. One thing to consider, though I'm not sure if the banks would change their mind over this, is that the purchase of the land and the purchase of the house are two separate contracts to two separate companies. They are both linked to Rawson but are in fact separate entities. Hope this helps a bit for the moment, I'll get back to you if/when I hear from my broker. Donna Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 197Jun 26, 2015 9:39 am Hi Anna and Alex, My mortgage broker got back to me. He said he would call around and ask some credit managers and below is his response. I've left his details attached to the bottom of the email in case you'd like to give him a call. We have been really happy with him and have had no issues at all with our Loan process with the lender he organised for us which was AFG Hone Loans. " I haven’t checked with everyone, but even your lender said the following.. “Hi Steve – weird, I’ve not heard about this - we are still doing house and land packages or off the plan purchases.” Regards, Steve The Senator Group (Australia) Pty Ltd Australian Credit Licence No. 383991 PO Box 349, Castle Hill NSW 1765 Tel: (02) 9659-6111 Fax: (02) 9659-7811 Mob: 0413-022-788 Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 198Jun 26, 2015 12:15 pm Hi Donna, thank you very much for such a quick clarification and for the contact! Hopefully it will not be confirmed, we are also talking to another broker and to the banks directly as well. I am just trying to understand what was the reason of saying us what he said... Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 199Jun 27, 2015 9:20 pm He everyone! Quick update - we talked to our lender from CBA and he said it's all good and they don't see any dramas at all, moreover, in his opinion Rawson's contract is one of the best he has ever seen. We are also talking to someone else on Monday, but so far - noone confirmed that, everyone is doing house and land packages loans. Sorry for the long posts, it was really stressful couple of days for us. Re: Aurora Estate - Alex Avenue - Schofields 200Jun 27, 2015 10:25 pm Hi Anna and Alex, Good to hear things seem to be all sorted. Sounds like you had a crazy couple of days. I always like to look for an upside to any experience and I think maybe yours is that you've come through the experience with a greater confidence in both the Loan approval process and in Rawson. Our solicitor pretty much said the same thing about the loan contract, that Rawson had already removed virtually all of the clauses he would have recommended removing, he was quite impressed. Donna So it seems like they just take on a lot of projects to get the cashflow for their own builds. COULDN'T AGREE MORE 14 45494 No idea about the driveway question, but your price for a house that size including landscaping seems very good! 1 6493 We bought land in Tallawong Schofields NSW size 30m X 12.5m and planning to get double story house build around 350 sqm. We are thinking about having premium inclusions… 0 4620 |