Hey all, thought it was time I started a thread since our build has finally progressed to the point where it's almost on site Has been a long wait and we can't wait to see some actual physical progress!
Having thought about buying/building a home for quite awhile, and watching housing/land prices climb higher and higher, we decided to bite the bullet and begin our search for our forever home. Being close to my family we had always talked about living together - maybe buying an acre and building side by side on the 1 block. Nothing ever eventuated and Mum was reluctant to move from the family home which she loved, so we decided to abandon our dream and just forge ahead without them.
After realising that we were actually going ahead without them and about to buy land made my parents, brother and his wife decide that it was now or never so they committed to buying with us. So we began the search for acreage but realised quickly that subdivision and building 3 houses on 1 property may be tricker than we’d anticipated. We ditched that idea and the search for 3 neighbouring blocks began. It wasn’t easy, we searched around for a few months and struggled to find something that fit all our budgets. Finally we found 2 neighbouring blocks that we liked in Grandvue Officer, after a lot of discussion my parents and my brother decided that they would build and live together since they currently live together and are very happy with that arrangement.
Our blocks are 18 x 35.5 with a slight 1m fall, when we put down our deposit we were told to expect settlement between April-July 2016, and it eventually settled in late September 2016.
After looking at as many house designs, plans and display homes as we could, both parties decided on a Burbank Indigo 5100 (now Hawthorn I believe). It was a bit weird cos we had not planned to build the same house but it just happened we all loved the way the Indigo was set out and the ample storage. The sales process was pretty good, they were very accommodating to our requests and having a customs division allowed us to make changes without too much fuss. Our house is relatively standard with a couple walls deleted and things moved/added, but my parents/brothers house has been heavily modified to accommodate dual living; with my parents downstairs and my brother’s family upstairs.
Here is what our floorplan looks like
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We put down an initial deposit with Burbank in September of 2015 and after a looooong sales process (which was our fault for making a billion changes) we signed our tender in June of 2016.
So far our time line is something like this
Land deposit paid - 19 August 2015
Burbank deposit paid - 1 September 2015
Burbank tender signed - 7 June 2016
Land settlement - 27th September 2016
Soil tests results - 11th October 2016
Burbank color selection - 10th and 11th November 2016
Building Contract Signed - 17th November 2016
Submit plans to developer - 22nd November 2016
Developer Approval - 14 December 2016
Building Permit received - 28th Feb 2017
File set to Construction team - 1st March 2017
We’ve been told that it will take a couple weeks for the construction team to make the necessary bookings and orders and we should see movement on site in around 2 weeks. After waiting so long it almost seems surreal that it’s finally all happening and the house of our dreams will actually start becoming a reality.
Meanwhile my parents/brothers build is lagging behind a little because they took so long finalizing their plans and so are a couple months behind us - they will go do their color selections next week, then it’s off to get developer and council approval. Hopefully it will go faster for them because we had to re-submit our plans a couple times; knowing what we know now they should be able to avoid those delays.
Anyhoo this is turning into a bit of a novel so I’d better stop now, hopefully we don’t get too many building delays and hit too many icebergs on the way so we can be in before Xmas! Hubby’s Mum want’s to come visit from Norway and we don’t have room in our current place
Thanks for reading! Hopefully I'll have some exciting updates soon!