Metricon Winchester 28- Landscaping

Great news!

We made our first proper furniture purchase today; the Avenue entertainment unit from Freedom. Couldnt go past the recent "price drop" plus a $225 discount for paying with Amex. Wont be delivered for about 6 weeks, then we have to find somewhere to store it.

Oh nice the entertainment unit is Lovely blackcat. I just looked it up, the console table from the same series is really nice too.

Yeah I really like the whole set but unfortunately don't need any of it!
I already have a lovely timber buffet and I don't think we're going to bother with a coffee table for now. I do like the console table but I'm worried it will be too deep for the space given the direction the front door opens, even though I'd really like one.

Just read through the whole thread.. lots of great ideas and selection so thanks for that..

Big Congratulations on getting the finance sorted !!! We settled our land last month and the bank undervalued it by 20k. We are now working on the building contract with M, Hayman 29RF, really trying to keep it as low as possible to ensure we can get 100% valuation on the build. Been a real bummer

Shame about the land valuing under. I had a similar situation but it was the build contract that came under. The land was fine. It was disappointing, but we worked it through, keeping out contract to needs with a few wants and got over the line. Good luck.

Did you try getting valuation from another lender ?

We got full valuation for our lot from a whole bunch of other lenders, we settled for the lesser valuation because we did not want to delay the settlement by a month. In case our build valuation does not come at par we've been told we can go for refinancing. We'd lose the LMI on the lot but the option is there.

No the lender was fine. It was the valuer who didn't think the contract was worth that much ie we had over capitalised for the area. We just put too much into the build contract and the area wouldn't sustain the value at that point of time. It might in the future. We re did the build contract taking out some items and it valued up. Both times were the same valuation firm.

With valuation, we were really careful not to upgrade too much stuff. Not only did we not want to spend more, but we know that there is no point building a $1million dollar house in a $500k suburb. Particularly an estate full of small first homes.

Agree. Something that might drive up our contract slightly is that we are trying to get the quotes for landscaping, security doors and shutters included in the bank loan.

However our perspective is sort of that we want the valuation we want, and any lender up for it would do. We are open to refinance and taking some loss upfront if that means most of post handover cash can be included in the loan. Cash is our numbers 1 constraint.

That’s a really good point.

You have to try and build your house to match your area. Have to think about the resell value.

Somehow our conveyancer didn't apply for the stamp duty concession (we're first home buyers/builders) so the full amount just came out of our account Now I'm trying to decipher what they need me to do so they can apply for the refund, they told me they need the build contract which seems a bit odd. Anyone able to shed any light?Save

We sorted this out at settlement of the land so we didn't have to pay it. It was a battle but my conveyancer finally convinced the banks lawyers who do there settlements that it wasn't payable.

This was after numerous calls to SRO in Victoria who confirmed it wasn't payable.

Thats what I assumed would happen, we were due to pay $5k but theyve taken $12k!

Oh they taken the whole lot. ouch. Are you in Victoria? If so call SRO and ask how you get the refund. We didn't have to pay anything as we brought our land after 1 July 2017.

Yes Victoria. I might have to do that; the person that rang me from the conveyancers office was very hard to understand and seemed confused by the process which doesnt bode well.

Yeah ring them yourself. I used a local Ballarat conyenancer he was very good. Follow everything up for us. It was all knew when we were settling.

We had to pay the lot (Victoria) then get a refund. Didn't have to wait until the end of the build and it didn't take too long to come back.




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This seems to be the case for us too, its just a pity no one actually told us. SRO said that once our FHOG is approved, we apply for the refund of the difference. So that wont happen until base stage, which means we're currently paying interest on the stamp duty we dont actually need to pay.

Not sure who it was that rang me from the conveyancer's office but they obviously had no clue at all. Our actual conveyancer has been fantastic through the whole process.

Sent a quick email through to the developer to check on our application and got this auto reply:
"We are currently receiving an unusually large number of plan submissions and our turnaround time is approximately three weeks."

According to My Metricon, ours was submitted on 22/1, though we settled on 29/1. So today is either two weeks or three weeks. So hopefully soon! Annoying that this adds so much time to the pre-build period. I do wonder how long it can possibly take to check each plan meets the developer requirements....

Took three weeks for our plans to be finalised because of the volume of building activity happening at the moment. Hopefully, they turn yours around quickly. Because if everyone takes a couple of weeks to do their bit it all impacts.