More good news

After the second valuation coming in good on the 24th, we've been trying to sort things out as quickly as possible, so that we might still be able to make a start on the build in Nov.

The good news is that yesterday our new mortgage provider formally approved the loan, meaning that we only have to complete the paperwork and send it back to get the finance for the build sorted. Then we got another piece of good news this arvo confirming that our house design has been approved by both the local council and the estate manager, meaning that as soon as the mortgage paperwork has been processed, we could be in a position to start building (builder dependent).

We've got one final meeting that we need to attend with the builder to sign off on the final construction drawings and that's it.

Happy days :)

Valuation

Second valuation is in today and the news is good :)

It's going to mean transferring our land mortgage to another bank, but it's going to save us a considerable amount of money over the course of the mortgage, so it's definitely worth the hassle.

The only hurdles remaining are the approvals that we're waiting for from the local council and the estate itself (Australand).

Colours Selections

Here are some of the items that we chose for the house at our colours selections.

External

Roof Tiles

Front Door

Front Door Handle

Internal Doors

Internal Door Handles

Carpet & Laminate Flooring

Tiles (darker for bathrooms and powder rooms, lighter for laundry)

Bathroom Sinks

Powder Room Sinks

Kitchen Sink

Taps

Ensuite Shower

Main Bathroom Shower

Kitchen

Stain (External doors and stairs)

Final Plans

Some of our finalized plans from our contract meeting.
I have lots more, but these are the only ones worth looking at.

Landscape (house position on block)

Downstairs Layout

Upstairs Layout

External Elevations

Front & Left hand side

Rear & Right hand side

Slab (with reinforcements for swimming pool)

Contract Meeting - Done!

Completed our contract meeting yesterday. Was expecting it to be along day based on what I'd read other people had experienced, but I didn't expect it to take that long as we weren't really making any major changes over what we had already agreed with the builder.

How wrong we were. Ended up taking 9.5hrs and most of it was just checking that the contract included all of the correct information. Most of the changes that were made were due to errors in the information the builder had over what we had told them we want. We did make a couple of changes that we hadn't previously included (sarking to the roof, insulation to the internal walls, sound insulation to the home theatre and we chose to upgrade the wall and roof insulation to larger batts).

Glad it's all over and done though and am now very positive over the whole experience yesterday. It was long, but the consultant was very good and made it a very easy process. Nothing we asked for was rejected, although we did have to question some of the prices they initially came back with and get them adjusted before agreeing to the extras (sarking for instance we got for 50% of what the builder originally wanted to charge us. Seems they made a mistake in the original pricing).

All of the plans should be submitted to the local council and also to Australand (the owner of the estate) over the coming week for approval and all things going well, hopefully the build will start sometime in early November. We have been told though, that any rejections could result in a sizeable delay as plans need will need to be changed to accommodate the request of either party, be signed off by us as acceptable and then be re-submitted to the relevant parties again for approval. This can apparently take up to 4 weeks.

We also had our final colours, electrical and flooring appointment last week at Porter Davis' World Of Style showroom in Southbank. We've got samples of some of the colours we selected, so I'll aim to get them uploaded to the blog sometime over the weekend.