Hi all,
After a drawn out search for an affordable four bedroom established house in Lara, Victoria that ticked all our boxes, we've conceded defeat and have decided to bite the bullet and build our next house!
Over the last four weeks, we've consulted our mortgage broker, visited display homes from multiple builders, inspected upcoming estates, consulted real estate agents, listed our house for sale, sold our house, put a deposit down on a block and signed off on the final estimate for our new house!
What a month it has been!!
Our journey started with actively looking for an established four bedroom, two bath, two living area house in Lara - the market is definitely a sellers market at the moment. Limited properties for sale in our area has driven sale prices through the roof meaning we couldn't see the value in buying established. So after yet another frustrating inspection where the estate agent informed us as we signed in that the vendor had already received multiple offers well over the asking price (and the property had been listed for less than 24 hrs!), we made the trek down to Armstrong Creek in search of display homes. The first display we inspected was the Fairhaven Homes Clovelly 225 - after inspecting at least 20 more displays across five display villages, we returned to our first encounter and picked it to pieces to start our list.
In the mean time, we sorted out our budget with our mortgage broker and started preparing our existing home for sale with the intention of renting during the build. I mentioned above that it's a sellers market in Lara at the moment - we had buyers through our house the night before it was listed online and received an offer well over our expectation 30 minutes after officially listing for sale! We accepted with our house having been for sale for a grand total of four hours! From the decision to sell it took less than two weeks to prepare and sell our current home.
From there, we've put a deposit down on Lot 36 of Lara Views Estate, which is now due to title in May 2017 (next month!) and signed off on the final estimate with Fairhaven who should be in a position to commence the build not long after titles (optimistic, so let's see how that eventuates).
We've made lots of decisions already and driven the new estates in Lara multiple times each week of the process so far to start bringing together our ideas and plans. I've found the threads on this site to be useful, so will document our progress to some extent to assist others in the future. I'll add bits and pieces as I think of them and as they happen.
This will be our second home, but our first build, so we are very excited and also nervous at the same time.
Looking forward to the adventure ahead!
Nathan & Caitie