Hi Folks,
Been lurking around the forum for a long time now. I have learnt so much and have thrown my 2 cents worth in whenever I thought I could add some value.
The reason for the "Saga" is that we are a long way from being able to build our dream home. I wanted to wait before I started a thread but it seems to be quite therapeutic to read along with other peoples journey's so I thought maybe it would do me good to put ours into print as well.
We bought into an estate last July. It's in Croydon Victoria, The Range Estate. There's a thread in the forum which I have tried to contribute to - fantastic folks on there going full steam ahead or waiting for their Stage to title. I'm afraid I have been a little negative there sometimes because of our situation. We bought, like many do, before the land had titled. We let the developer know that we wanted to build quite a large house and to advise what the site coverage was to be. They told us (notice the "told") that they were getting permission from council to move from an initial restriction of 40% site coverage (ludicrously small) to 60% and that this appeared to have been agreed to. We could work with that so... we bought it!! Titles were due in August 09..... then November 09..... Then before Christmas 09...... So we received the titles on January 18th, 2010. YAY!!!!
Where we noticed that our Site Coverage allowance was 45%.
Now in the meantime we had been working with a buider / design company on our custom dream home. All ready to go with a beautiful home and we had kept it down to 58% anticipating the 60% alteration. Now what. The contract says we can't sell the land without putting a house on it. We don't really want to sell it as it's a beautiful estate. So we plough on, trying to get it down as far as we can. Which we've done. Now it only takes up 50.37% and I've decided to go no further. Any smaller and it just won't be the house we want to live in any more.
Enough Chat - here are some plans and a 3D rendering of the home we'd like to build.
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I know the house will look huge to most people but there are good reasons for al of the rooms. Plans are now in for Developer Approval. I have received agreement from them that they would approve it if it's just the size of the site coverage, provisional to getting council approval to change the title allocation. The other issue is the 3rd Garage. They don't want a dominance of the garage to the frontage. I have set it back and treated it with render instead of face brick so that it is different. My justification is I have two teenagers, one 17, who will be driving soon so we want to keep the extra cars behind a garage door and not out on the street. We'll have to wait and see about that one. Next is to submit that Planning Permit. I'm putting that together now. I spoke to the planning folks at the council who told me that it had been a very "difficult" process with the developer and they were NOT inclined to make any changes.......
Failing approval, I will be off to VCAT. The site coverage numbers appear to be quite arbitrary. Two lots over the owner says he had a 54% allocation, which he didn't use. His block isn't bigger than mine so what's the difference??
Sorry for the long rant to begin with. I promise it won't be all doom and gloom. I have done colour selections as well so I'll try to take pics of the tiles and put them on as well. I've done the whole of the house in a 3D program so I can do some internal shots down the track. Brilliant being able to walk around on the PC!
Thanks for getting down this far!!!
SK