Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Aug 26, 2013 12:30 pm Hey there, My husband and I are building our first home with the HBC, at The Vale. Land is titling in November. We're very excited and nervous all at once. My in-laws built in QLD in ~2004 and 2009/10, so hubby has been witnessed the whole deal before (plus he's an engineer, so everything makes sense to him!). Prior to the in-laws new house, I never knew anyone who'd built a house, so I'm definitely feeling out of my element . All of our family is back in QLD, and we haven't told any of them yet - going to wait until finance is through. We're still in the early stages, tonight we're going to sign off on the contract and house plan (providing everything we've asked for comes back today so we have time to discuss before our meeting). Our block is 372m2, 10m frontage. It was originally a house and land package with The Regent on it, but we swapped the house design for The Mayfair, because we prefer it much better. I can't remember what the m2 the house is, but I know we're going to end up with a 10 x 11m backyard, which makes me very, very happy!! We have started looking into some colours and bits and pieces (tiles, colourbond etc), because we know some of the suppliers HBC use. The rest will have to wait until we receive our Pre-Start folder. We have already decided on some upgrades that will be in the contract - tiles (400mm), range hood which includes upgrade to 900mm appliances and caesarstone bench tops (current monthly special through HBC), colourbond. We have requested estimates on some others: 0.5m increase for the kitchen bench, pivot shower doors, increase ensuite bench top and upgrade to double sink, enclose rear of garage with a door. Some other minor things, but we will have to wait and see the prices and see if we can afford any of it!! We'd love to hear from anyone else who has built/is building. All advice/suggestions/commentary welcome. Cheers, ~Katrina Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 2Aug 26, 2013 11:31 pm Welcome! My partner have just got the keys to our house. We had a 300m2 block with a 10m frontage. There are many things to consider. I would put a door on the laundry and also at a minimum put a door frame on the halfway back to the bedrooms so you can add a door later. Good for reducing noise but also heating and cooling. I wish I had changed the sliding door in the laundry to a standard door with a window or a standard door and a window next to it. Then you can have the laundry trough in the corner against the wall, less cleaning that small space! Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 3Aug 26, 2013 11:38 pm Also consider where you will put the washing line, if you go wall mount think about maybe amended widow positions... Also with windows consider how low they are. In your living area you might want to put a couch in front of the window facing the backyard, if its all the way to the ground this will be difficult. Same for windows in minor bedrooms. Also since you have the space in the ensuite make the shower bigger then standard size. I am assuming you want to push the vanity in the ensuite out to both walls? From my experience extra cabinets were about $1000/m I'd also consider swapping the kitchen and dining room. Though you'd then have to put the sliding door in the living room, so again you would have to consider if that works for furniture! Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 4Aug 27, 2013 2:47 am Hi Katrina, Welcome to HomeOne. We're building with HBC at the moment and just had our roof installed last week. There's a lot to consider when buildin a house, but definitely try to make as many upgrades as you can afford that will add value to your house and are too expensive/awkward to add later. My biggest suggestion would be to consider upgrading your kitchen cabinets and drawers. Most kitchens come with basic cabinets and likely no upper cabinets. Consider how you'll use your kitchen and what you need to store, then spend your money there....you won't regret it. Also, build as much as you can structurally into your contract and give yourself the maximum allowance at pre-start that you can. If you don't use it, great, but if you need it, then it's there. Major structural issues like doors, closets, cabinets need to be added on into your contract. Reserve pre-start for upgrades to your taps, fittings, handles...which does add up actually. Also, add more power points. There's never enough by default! Nitro The Village at Wellard Homebuyers Centre Ultimate Entertainer (Custom) Our Home Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61358 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 5Aug 30, 2013 10:51 am Hey fmac and nitro - thanks so much for your replies Congrats fmac on receiving your keys - hope the move went well We removed the door from the laundry linen cupboard and put in on the laundry - I couldn't think of anything worse than not having a laundry door! I'm used to having an open linen space, so we were happy with that. I'm aiming for a 'traditional' hills hoist (not wall mounted), but hubby isn't so keen - apparently it's too 'old-school', so the advice about the windows came in handy, thank you! We didn't really have the money to make the ensuite shower bigger, but we did upgrade the vanity to be wall-to-wall (inc. cupboards), and a double sink. We had that in a rental property in Dianella and found it to be super useful. Yay for roof nitro, that's awesome! Definitely took the advice to add as much into the contract as possible (rather than pre-start). We tried to add as many upgrade/changes that we would like to have, but not too OTT - at this stage we're thinking 5 years in it, but haven't decided if we'll sell or rent it out. For resale it's great, renting I'm a bit wary about upgrades. We did extend the benchspace in the kitchen, which therefore increased the cupboards as well. We got an estimate on adding upper cabinets, but the price was ridiculous (IOO). Hubby is an engineer so he is going to do it afterwards. We're aiming for a double cupboard each side of the rangehood. The powerpoint thing seems to be the most talked about regret! We've read to think about positioning in the living areas if we want to wall mount TVs, and adding some in the hallway etc for vacuuming. We will also be adding extra to the living area and activity room for entertainment systems and computers etc - any advice on other places/rooms with extra? What did you both find to be the most stressful part of the whole building exercise? Thanks! ~Katrina Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 6Aug 30, 2013 11:06 am Sounds like you've thought things through well. If making the shower double is expensive I'd at least look at going 1mx1m rather then standard 90x90, it can feel quite tight that size... Powerpoints can be a hard one, make sure you have enough in the kitchen! I can't remember your exact layout, and I'm on my phone so can't check, but if you have an island bench add one! Also with PowerPoints if you can't afford all the ones you want remember you can add then reasonably easily to the double brick wall but not the internal ones so priorities the ones on the internal walls Building is a roller coaster of emotions try and be positive and if you have concerns don't let them fob you off! Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 7Aug 30, 2013 11:10 am An update of where we are at: -We signed our PWC on Monday night. We also managed to get pics of all the pre-start items, so we can now start choosing colours etc. We have a contact now also at Trevors Carpets, so we will go and visit them on the weekend to at least get an idea of the range as well as a price on and underlay upgrade. -We met with the Resolve broker on Wednesday night to complete all the applications. I have just emailed him our last bit of paperwork, so our application is going in today! We should get pre-approval in ~2 weeks, so perfectly in time for when our FPC should be ready. -We're going to pay the land deposit and sign all that paperwork tomorrow, the last piece of the initial process I suppose. Other than that, we're busily playing with 3D house design programs so we can get test colours etc. We have a pretty firm idea of what we like, but I'm the type of person who needs to see it in order to really visualise it, so hubby is being very patient with me! Happy Friday everyone! ~Katrina Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 8Aug 30, 2013 11:16 am Thanks for the shower idea fmac, I hadn't thought about just increasing it a little bit - all the discussions had been around double or nothing! I can see our whole pre-start budget going on power points Luckily we're happy with almost all of the other standard options! Looking forward to being able to share the news with our family and friends - half of all the issues right now for us is trying to keep it all hush-hush. Think I'm going to need to take up meditation during this process! Cheers ~Katrina Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 9Aug 30, 2013 11:29 am Carpet upgrades can get expensive quickly! I feel for you in that regard. We kept our house hush hush till finance was approved, only my mum and one sister knew! It was hard to keep quiet!! Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 10Aug 30, 2013 2:50 pm I found your thread - yay!! You seem further ahead of us, we haven't even begun contact with Trevor's carpets - thank god we have till November till land titles!! Cameron & Kelly The Vale in Aveley, WA Homebuyers Centre The Regent Our Home Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=65879 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 11Sep 01, 2013 8:04 pm Still think you guys are ahead of us Kelly, we haven't got our pre-start folder yet. Long story about the contact at Trevor's, but anything I do manage to find out Ill be sure to pass on Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 12Sep 01, 2013 9:50 pm Yay for your pre-start folder. It's so much fun to go through selections but your budget can easily get blown out of proportion. We went with Carpet Call for flooring, but the folks at Trevor's had similar deals--basically they'll give you upgrades at builders costs. We added underlay to all the carpeted bedrooms and had timber laminate everywhere else. Electrical was crazy pricey too. We added another pp to each room plus some in the common areas for vacuuming and general convenience. Another spot to think about is a pp at the side of your island. Really convenient. Nitro The Village at Wellard Homebuyers Centre Ultimate Entertainer (Custom) Our Home Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61358 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 13Sep 09, 2013 3:20 pm I cannot wait to get our pre-start folder next week when we sign the FPC. We built most of our upgrades into the contract so thankfully pre-start should be fairly easy on the wallet! I had a call this morning from our Resolve broker and our official pre-approval came through at the end of last week!!' Best part is, especially for key start, only 3 small conditions. One of which we have already done, just needs to be sent to them. So that's an update on where we're at. Waiting for our appt with HBC sales rep next week and we can then start visiting the suppliers. We have already decided on colourbond, render, garage door, gable, driveway, bricks and alfresco paving colours, as well at the ensuite and kitchen colours/tiles so we feel like we're ahead of the game a little bit! Not much further progress on the land this week, except that all the block out material has been taken down. ~Katrina Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 14Sep 10, 2013 4:12 pm Wow you guys seem so organised! We picked out our tiles on the weekend, should really upload some pics We asked whether we could build in some of our upgrades into the building contract and our HBC rep said it'll be done at pre start They're so frusterating some times. We have an appt with the bank tonight so will ask them if we can get an extra 20k or so built into our loan to pay for the pre start upgrades. I also thought of an upgrade you might want to think about that we're going to do - we are upgrading our hot water system to instantanious. I don't understand it 100% (that's cam's job), but basically it means your Hot water system doesn't run out and it doesn't constantly heat up the water.. its gas-related.. but it also means if you go away you're not wasting electricity through your system keeping your water warm.. just a thought Cameron & Kelly The Vale in Aveley, WA Homebuyers Centre The Regent Our Home Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=65879 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 15Sep 10, 2013 5:11 pm Katrina, I clearly had too many glasses of wine when I posted last...I misread and thought you had your pre-start folder already Well done getting organised early...there's so many things to do and options to choose. Unfortunately HBC isn't keen to upsell you on anything, which is a rather strange business model, but if you know what you'd like in advance it's a huge help. Regarding that instant hot water system Kelly mentioned, I think that sounds amazing...should be in every Perth house. I'll have to look into it in the months/year ahead. I find it so frustrating on winter mornings to run the tap a full minute or more to get warm water. Not very water wise Nitro The Village at Wellard Homebuyers Centre Ultimate Entertainer (Custom) Our Home Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=61358 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 16Sep 10, 2013 7:31 pm If you want upgraded costs included you might have to try and push it. The sales guy doesn't want to do it as it is more work for them! If the bank won't include extra have a few big things added to the contract this AC that you can then remove at prestart and use the credit for the upgrades you want. We did that. I have also come to realise the lower end builders seem to work n a model of keep it simple, minimal upgrades etc while the other end seem to push the upgrades! If I hadn't been so prepared for our prestart we would have missed many things. I think the stainless steel laundry tub. Is the only one she mentioned!! You might find it cheaper to have them install the strange and change over after handover. I was told it would be $2000 to upgrade to instantaneous. You can get a system for $1000! And you'd probably be able to sell of the storage one. Though its worth knowing what they charge. Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 17Sep 10, 2013 7:34 pm Just realised that post might be more meant for Kelly1992 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. Do not use Resolve Financ 18Oct 09, 2013 8:19 pm Sorry guys, looks like I've missed a bit on here. It's been, quite frankly, a messed up few weeks in regards to our house. I'll give the short version: -09 September we were advised by our Resolve broker that Keystart pre-approval had come through with only 3 conditions (all easy). He said it was the easiest loan he'd even seen some back. -11 September hubby rings from work to say he had received a pay rise...great right? Not really, because it put us over the limit for Keystart. Que stress attack here. Spoke to our broker who said he would look into bank options and get back to me by lunchtime. 30 mins later our HBC sales rep calls and pretty much ambushes me (hubby is the finance guru, and he knows it). Tells me we need to come up with another ~10k of gen savings in 6 weeks or no bank will look at us. Says we're on our own for 6 weeks, come back and talk to them when we have the money. -14 September hubby and I decide to go and chat to our own bank. We had been pretty unhappy with our broker already, so we decided if we had to go the traditional lender route, we'd do it on our own. Our bank tells us we need another ~25k before they'll even CONSIDER our application, and that no bank will lend to us, period. Queue complete and utter meltdown from both hubby and myself. -Called our Sales Rep (who wanted to be the main contact for all aspects, including finance). Told him what our bank had said. We chatted about it and came to an acceptable outcome. -15 September: send Resolve broker an email to organise a meeting to discuss lender options. He sends back the rudest, most unprofessional email in existence. He also told us we would go with whatever lender he chose for us, and that we would not get to choose. It was like waving a red flag at a bull. Hubby and I sent back and email and told him we wanted to deal with someone else. Queue major blow up here. -September 19: Broker calls and advises Keystart has changed their earnings limits, and we are now eligible again. -Queue lots of other bulls&*t with broker and sales rep here, until it blows up at our contract signing meeting. I ended up storming out of the room and telling our sales rep I would be contacting Dale Alcock to discuss the whole thing. -September 26: 2 business days before land contract finance date (obviously still waiting on keystart). email sales rep to confirm that extension has been applied for. Told yes, all done, will email broker to confirm and get back to us asap. -September 27: last business day before contract date - I call Axiom Consulting to confirm extension has been granted. Told no, extension application was received late the day before and only sent then. Therefore meaning the broker had NOT submitted the extension as we were told. -Queue another huge blow up, resulting in us sacking our broker and dealing with the manager of finance at HBC. 2.5 hour heated phone debate with our sales rep. kajdsf;askj;oiawhv;ojandvo;awheg;oaw;glk. That's pretty much how I feel about it all right now. This whole thing is supposed to be fun, but I'm hating every minute of it. To add to it, we missed out on the increased FHOG by 5 hours - another long story. RAGE. My advice to anyone in Perth building with an ABN group builder - DO NOT USE RESOLVE FINANCE. AT ALL. EVER. Biggest mistake we've made to date. I've just re-read this and realised it doesn't make that much sense, but it certainly made me feel better to get it off my chest. Basically we've just had a really awful experience with a completely rude and incompetent Resolve Broker, and it's stressed us to the max. For a good week afterwards, I was so depressed I didn't even get out of bed. At all. Feeling ok about things now, still unhappy with the situation but just praying that formal approval will come through soon and it will all be over with. /end rant. Katrina & Mitchell Building our first home with Homebuyers Centre, WA The Vale, Aveley Follow our story here https://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66829&p=1068696#p1068696 Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 19Oct 09, 2013 8:35 pm Makes complete sense and I can only imagine how you must feel!! I hope that it can all be sorted for you and also sorry about not qualifying for the new FHOG. I hope once this is all sorted you can get excited about the build again! Re: Homebuyers Centre WA - Aveley. First home! 20Oct 10, 2013 11:14 am Im so sorry to hear its been such a mess.. We used Resolve Finance for our first build and it was such smooth sailing. Shame. 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