Patience is a virtue. Well at least when you're building!

Yet another month has passed and we are yet to start out build. It seems January is probably one of the laziest and slowest months of the year. Here is a quick update on the progress we have had recently:

• Bank has given unconditional approval
• Second soil test was ordered on the 06/01/2015 and we are still waiting for the results!
• Building permit is being held up by the soil test
• Final construction drawings also waiting on the soil test

We are due to go to site on the 30/01/2015 but this is becoming less feasible with every day that goes past.

Fortunately, our current Building Coordinator is absolutely wonderful and responds to my emails/calls within the same day. At worst it will be early the next day! Very impressed and grateful for her top notch service. 

Porter Davis is chasing up the engineering company to provide a report for the soil test. The engineering company says they have already done the test and have a back log of reports to completed.

The strange thing is I have been out to the block and could not see any holes or disturbed soil whatsoever! Who to believe...?

You definitely need to be patient when building a home...

Thanks for reading!

Pay us $900 or no buiding permit... Surprise!

Hi All,

Our building coordinator emailed us yesterday to inform us that the council is holding of issuing our Building Permit because we have not yet paid the $900  'Community Infrastructure Levy'. Say what?!

After frantically calling around to get an answer, mind you this was 4pm on a Friday afternoon. We finally got an answer from the council that the developer of Merrifield has decided to pass this cost onto the purchasing party. Here is the paragraph derived from the Hume City Council website (http://www.hume.vic.gov.au/Building_Planning/Planning/Planning_Fees):

'Community Infrastructure Levy

The Community Infrastructure Levy is a fee paid to Council by developers to assist in the provision of local facilities and services for each estate.The levy is generally paid for upfront by the developers upon settlement of a parcel of land. However, for some estates the developers will pass this requirement on to individual land owners.It is recommended that you contact the land developer for further information on your specific estate. Alternatively you can contact Council’s Strategic Planning department on (03) 9205 2200.'

At no point throughout the sales process did the developer disclose that there will be a levy passed down to us after settlement.

In the interested of not further delaying our build we will be paying the Levy first thing Monday morning. Having said that, I have sent an email to the Vendor requesting if this cost has truly been passed onto us the land owners and why it wasn't disclosed to us.

Thank your for reading.

Check your pegs!

As we are coming closer and closer to site start we are making sure everything is ready to go. Having taken the advice given here: http://www.anewhouse.com.au/2012/01/block-boundary-pegs/ we thought we would go out to the block and check that our pegs are still in place.

First visit yesterday we managed to find only the two front pegs. This concerned us a little so we went back out the our block today with a small shovel and hey presto! We found the third peg.

Designated Bushfire Prone Areas - No longer covers our block

Hi All,

Found out today that our block is no longer in a designated Bushfire prone area. Great news as we will be saving about 7k!

Make sure you check this with your builder before you sign the final construction drawings.

You can find out this information for your block here: http://services.land.vic.gov.au/maps/interactive.jsp

Cheers

Well that's settled then... We're officially the owners of a block of land!

Finally! Settlement successfully completed 2 days shy of Christmas day. We are officially the proud owners of this new block of land.

Through in some photos of the new estate park too.

Cheers :)

Land has titled!

Hi All,

Finally! Some great news and another milestone achieved for our build.

We have been informed that our block of land has titled. Settlement is expected to be on the 23/12/2014 which will be a great Christmas present for us.

Even though we have been delayed by 2 months due to waiting on titles we are very excited to progress our build.

Some other news...

• Our house design has been approved by the Design Review Committee (DRC) 
• We have a new Build Co-ordinator. Email responses are now always with 24hrs even after hours! She has been so helpful and has given us more information in 2 weeks about our build then we had received since we first paid the deposit.

Thank you for reading. 

Land title delay :(

Hi All,

As I am currently overseas it has been quite difficult to update our blog regularly and this will be the case for the remainder of November.

Unfortunately, the developer has decided to delay the titles of our blocks (no idea why!!). The reason they gave was that they are worried about everyone starting to build at the same time and the traffic coming in and out of the estate will be too heavy for the works to continue smoothly on the front entrance.

This is really disappointing for us. We even received a letter from the developer to say that our titles are due in October and to prepare ourselves for settlement. I think something big must have happened for them to delay by two months.

We are now looking at a site start of January 2015. If we are lucky.

Hope to have some better news next time.