Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 17, 2012 8:03 am Hi guys! We recently took out a house and land package with Henley Homes. We've made our intial deposit and have received our quotations and inclusions. Moreover, we are booked in for our Cosham Information session this weekend, I'm excited and at the same time nervous because I'm a bit clueless on what to expect. My hubby and I went to various Henley display homes to get an idea in terms of color schemes, tiles, etc for our new home. Also, I would greatly appreciate your suggestions or you can share your experiences here.
PS: This is our first but compared to my husband I'm one hell of a nervous wreck! haha! Thanks in advance to those who will respond. Re: Henley's house and land package 2Apr 17, 2012 9:50 am Welcome pinknoise to the exciting world of building your own house The first thing you should read is this thread ... viewtopic.php?f=31&t=5823 and then do a search for anything else you want to know about as you will most likely find it on here. We are all happy to help you through any problems .... good luck with your build!! For info on our build: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=43093 Built the McLaren by Dechellis - slab down 22 Feb - handover 30 Aug 2011 - and gardens finished 9 Dec 2012!! Re: Henley's house and land package 3Apr 17, 2012 10:18 am Mclaren Welcome pinknoise to the exciting world of building your own house The first thing you should read is this thread ... viewtopic.php?f=31&t=5823 and then do a search for anything else you want to know about as you will most likely find it on here. We are all happy to help you through any problems .... good luck with your build!! thanks Mclaren! I will definitely check out the link you provided! Thank God for forums such as this! Re: Henley's house and land package 4Apr 19, 2012 9:10 pm It's me again. I just have a quick query to all of you guys who are building their homes for the first time just like us.Did you seek the services of a conveyancer or a solicitor when you decided to go with your builder? THis is our first and I must admit we are not the most knowledgeable when it comes to this sort of things but I just wanted to check if it's really worth to have a solicitor instead. I believe Henley is a reputable company so I'm not that much worried but we are also thinking of getting a solicitor just in case. I just wanted to make sure we are making the right decision, because I've enquired about solicitor's fees and they are pretty steep and i've seen people in the forum employing the services of a conveyancer with no problems at all. Do you guys reckon the conveyancer can simply do the job so there isn't really no need to employ the services of a solicitor? Thanks for your time! Re: Henley's house and land package 5Apr 19, 2012 10:08 pm I used a solicitor to go over my land contract. That costs $250 and was worth it. They just prepare a report and put everything in plain English. With house contract we didn't need one. It was much more straight forward. But if it is your first home then maybe You can do that as well. Henley have been upfront with us and very professional. Very much recommend them! I'm building in South East melb. I learnt a lot in the beginning by reading other Henley threads as well. Hope that helps Re: Henley's house and land package 6Apr 19, 2012 10:27 pm investa I used a solicitor to go over my land contract. That costs $250 and was worth it. They just prepare a report and put everything in plain English. With house contract we didn't need one. It was much more straight forward. But if it is your first home then maybe You can do that as well. Henley have been upfront with us and very professional. Very much recommend them! I'm building in South East melb. I learnt a lot in the beginning by reading other Henley threads as well. Hope that helps thanks so much! would it be possible to ask the name of the solicitor who went over your land contract? we're building in western suburbs. thanks a lot! Re: Henley's house and land package 7Apr 19, 2012 10:58 pm I think it depends on how confident you are in reading and understanding contracts. We hired a conveyancer to handle our land settlement, but made sure we understood the land contract fully. We did not hire anyone in regards to our building contract, but again we read over it well and ensured if there was a single clause that we did not understood we asked for clarification. Hiring a solicitor seems a bit over the top, but I guess it may give you peace of mind. Re: Henley's house and land package 8Apr 19, 2012 11:25 pm nglbuilder I think it depends on how confident you are in reading and understanding contracts. We hired a conveyancer to handle our land settlement, but made sure we understood the land contract fully. We did not hire anyone in regards to our building contract, but again we read over it well and ensured if there was a single clause that we did not understood we asked for clarification. Hiring a solicitor seems a bit over the top, but I guess it may give you peace of mind. thanks nglbuilder. I don't know what Im gonna do without the help of this forum. Re: Henley's house and land package 9Apr 30, 2012 7:30 am We went to Henley in Pointcook display office to sign our land contract and we already left the office when we realised that the copy of the contract given to us was unsigned by the vendor. We went back to let our sales consultant know about this and get another one that has been signed as we've signed around 5 copies and I'm certain I've seen the others signed but she said it's fine. She didn't give us another copy and she said the other contracts were unsigned as well. (but I don't really believe her because I'm sure I've seen other copies that were signed and the other document that she asked us to sign has signature on it.by the way, we signed two contracts at that time!) She said she will be sending another one to us and another one to our conveyancer with signatures and it was just a copy for us to read so it doesn't really matter. I'm having second thoughts about this, is this really the normal procedure in Henley? I also made mention that we needed the signed copies so we can bring it in the bank to get our loan formally approved but she said, they will also send them the signed copies. I just find it odd and inconvenient that they will ask us to go there and sign the contracts only to send us another one Our sales consultant was fine until we made our initial deposit and signed the siting plan and certainty forms At first, it was easy to get in touch with her and she would often address our queries but the last few weeks she wouldn't return our messages... anyway, that's fine now because she said after the land contract she'll hand over our file to another person in their office and this person will be dealing with us from now on. I'm just hoping that this new person will be more helpful and accomodating. sorry for the long rant! Re: Henley's house and land package 10Apr 30, 2012 11:12 am i know it does sound strange. We also purchased a house and land package, well sort of. We bought our land from the developer who had essentially 5 builders we could use. If I remember rightly when we were doing the contract for the land we went in and signed the land contract and they gave us a copy of what we had just signed but it was unsigned by the vendor, apparently this was because the salesperson is not technically the vendor so they had to send the contract to them to get them to sign it and then they sent us (and our conveyancer) in the mail a fully executed contract with both ours and the vendors signatures. me being the paranoid person I am read every page side by side of the two contract to make sure they had not slipped anything in or taken something out and they were exactly the same. As long as you keep the original you signed you should not worry too much. Things can get a lot more stressful from here so try to not get too wound up. Good luck with actually dealing with the building side of things. Re: Henley's house and land package 11Apr 30, 2012 4:13 pm Hey we purchased house & land package with Henley recently. Cant remember bout contracts but I know that we have also had issues with one of the three people we have dealt with along the way (other 2 were AMAZING!!!!) and we were always told from the start if we werent happy with someone working with us, that we could always request a new assigned staff member. Our sales rep told us that used to be the number 1 complaint they had, trouble communicating with staff but apparently they re structured their admin so instead of say, 5 people looking after the whole of Victoria, they have regionalised it so there are like 5 people now just looking after south east melbourne. hope this makes sense lol but Id just request someone else if your still not happy!! Process: Land Settlement: 17/02 House colours picked: 20/02 Slab: 25/03 Framework: 28/03 Windows & Roof framing: 01/04 Plumbing: 06/04 Lock Up Stage: 22/04 Paint & Tiles: 14/05 Re: Henley's house and land package 13May 01, 2012 9:41 pm we received our land contracts and vendor's statement today! now, we're anxiously waiting for our color appointment, tender and building contract appointment. we tried ringing our home and land manager already but hasn't heard from him yet so we just left a message on his phone. we're hoping to get booked soon because our land contract states that we need to get our loan formally approved by 23rd of may and we also wanted to ensure that we're able to avail the FHOG..anybody here knows how long it normally takes to get the bank loan formally approved and the building contract finalised? Re: Henley's house and land package 14May 02, 2012 12:31 am Ah the selections appoints, how exciting and a time to try and show great restraint (very easy to blow budget). Our loan took about 6- 8 weeks to get formal approval, but most of that time was waiting for the builder to provide the required documents (plans, engineering reports, selections variations). The only thing the bank had to do was review the plans to have them valued to ensure we werent borrowing more than their valuation. Re: Henley's house and land package 15May 05, 2012 2:29 pm Dont stress so much, you dont need a lawyer they will cost to much. just read contract get them to explain it to you. pinknoise we received our land contracts and vendor's statement today! now, we're anxiously waiting for our color appointment, tender and building contract appointment. we tried ringing our home and land manager already but hasn't heard from him yet so we just left a message on his phone. we're hoping to get booked soon because our land contract states that we need to get our loan formally approved by 23rd of may and we also wanted to ensure that we're able to avail the FHOG..anybody here knows how long it normally takes to get the bank loan formally approved and the building contract finalised? Re: Henley's house and land package 16May 29, 2012 3:07 pm Hi there. As you all know, we took the land and package offer by Henley. When we took it, we were also entitled with the henley first home owner boost which gives us an additional $20K discount on top of the $20K discount that the govt is offering (FHOG). My question is, will these deductions show in the tender price or it will only be outlined in the contract? It's just that I had the impression that the tender price is the final price so these deductions should already been applied on the tender price or I am wrong. Thanks Re: Henley's house and land package 18Jun 06, 2012 2:14 pm We finally signed our building contracts today. We went to our bank and handed out our contracts & my lender ordered valuation on our property. Im hoping everything turns out well*fingers crossed* as my admin just mentioned to me that one of their clients came back with $60k undervalued on their property. In addition, they went with the same bank as ours (cba) & also in the same street we're building... Re: Henley's house and land package 19Jun 07, 2012 3:02 am undervaluations are really common at the moment as properties are just not selling for the amount you would normally pay. We were lucky and our bank came back with a valuation the same as what we paid, more or less... So I guess it is something you have to be prepared for and try to come up with cash to cover any potential difference between the amount you are paying and the banks valuation. Fingers crossed. Re: Henley's house and land package 20Jun 14, 2012 5:21 pm nglbuilder undervaluations are really common at the moment as properties are just not selling for the amount you would normally pay. We were lucky and our bank came back with a valuation the same as what we paid, more or less... So I guess it is something you have to be prepared for and try to come up with cash to cover any potential difference between the amount you are paying and the banks valuation. Fingers crossed. Thanks so much! I got a call from my lender today and our loan has been approved! She posted our contracts today and I hope to get them tomorrow! Yay! Our valuation also came back the same as our contract price and we don't need to pay LMI! Double yay! Guess, I was worrying too much for nothing! i would suggest nothing is unreasonable for PCI. we did all sorts, including checking the hot water, checking all the GPO's had power, testing that the showers were… 9 98688 The significant date is when receive final payment invoice Check that section of contract Bit of fluff by builders prior to that 1 15951 Hi Everyone I learned something this week that I thought would be worth sharing. In NSW a lot of developers of subdivisions put covenants on the land which normally… 0 6558 |