Apparently Evadene (Tarneit) has been in the news a bit, or so claims the Evadene website. Regardless, I know they're promoting themselves quite a bit so I'm curious to see how many other people have bought at Evadene in Stage 1 or Stage 2? We bought in Stage 1, 2nd release. We're building on Evadene Drive, with Porter Davis. Our house is the Lawson II in Smart Living, which is now the Lisbon 22 in Access, having been upgraded as a larger sized house. But we've still got the Smart Living inclusions, name and deal, for now, and we're building a Barwon facade on a corner block. Should be fun!
Building in Stage 1 in Evadene has apparently commenced this month. So I'm told. My site start has been pushed back to September 25, and we're assured it'll go ahead, but I'm still a bit frowny faced over the whole thing (I'm also frowny faced about the bizarre street lighting featuring green butterflies in the Evadene streetscape... It's the strangest looking thing!).
Actually, I'm frowny faced since land settlement. This is probably a lesson learned by everyone already and I'm the only one who didn't know, but we had a massive stuff-up by our broker and had less than 24 hours to come up with $11,700, or lose our land.
We met a broker via Simonds Homes (a recommendation from the office in Truganina). We liked her, she seemed nice. We stayed with her even though we decided to go with Porter Davis. She brokered a home loan with CBA and we were happy. In February, shortly after our contract signing, she rang me up and told me she thought she'd better do the whole loan all in one, rather than land first, then house, then combined. I thought, OK? Why not? So did my husband.
The total loan amount came in as 90% after our 5% on land, 5% on house and then the FHOG. But... and here's the thing. Because she filed it all as one, they'd only pay out 90% at a time, and FHOG doesn't get paid out till slab is poured. If they'll only pay 90% of land and we've paid 5%... there's a slight matter of a missing extra 5% plus fees that we ended up finding out about via our freaked out conveyancer. CBA advised that they were ready to pay 106k but we owed 117k. And our contract is surprisingly lacking in information about this situation. Because overall, the amount was to be paid, it's just that in stages, they'd only pay 90% of each thing at a time.
So we found that if we didn't come up with it immediately, the land wouldn't settle and everything would've gone boom. Surely, I think, my broker would have been smart enough to mention a little matter of nearly 12k? No, because my broker is apparently an idiot who forgot this would happen, who forgot that was the original reason she suggested splitting up the loan. She takes two days to get around to finding out that this is her fault (after convincing me she'd sort it), and then when she rings me up to explain it to me, doesn't think to apologise at all, even though it is completely a result of her doing the loans as a combination, rather than two and combining them later. She went from being reserved and wanting to wait, to ringing me up with NOW NOW NOW. After it took her two days to work the bloody thing out, we officially had one day remaining to get the money to the developers. Did I mention I live in Heathmont, and my conveyancer is in Pakenham, and settlement was in Bendigo?
My husband is considering seeking advice from the Ombudsman, and our conveyancer told us that although she's got lots of work from our broker, we'd be completely within our rights to seek the advice of an Ombudsman and that in her view our broker "really f***** up" and "should be grovelling right now for doing that and not even mentioning it or realising it".
It turns out I have nice parents who became incensed at the idea of me losing my first home because of someone else's bungle and short notice, and in a superhuman effort they managed to get that 11.7K to the developers on the day of settlement. Life being what it is, we'd had to buy a new car the previous week and thus did not have access to such funds. Of course, if we'd had some bloody notice, it would've been a different story.
But at last, we've settled... now we're just waiting for whatever variety of stuff-up occurs when it comes time for us to figure out how the bank will sort out progress payments and delays with the FHOG after the slab being poured and whatnot. Since, you know, our broker has proved remarkably difficult to contact after land settlement and we know almost nothing about what we're supposed to do! Yay!
I'm telling myself it'll all be worth it when I have a nice kitchen and a home theatre room at the end of it. It will, right? RIGHT?! Heheh.