It's Been a Big Busy Week!

We took 2 big steps towards building our house last week, we signed our building contract with Porter Davis and our land has finally settled!

It's been a few weeks since we cancelled our initial contract appointment schedule and we've been waiting for our building coordinator to set our new appointment. She couldn't give us schedule that both my husband and I are free to attend, so we agreed that I will attend the appointment, sign the docs, pay the completion of 5% deposit and then I can bring home the docs which my husband can sign and express post back to PD. And that was what we did last Tuesday.

What's not to rave about?

• Despite the detailed checklist I provided regarding the updates from our tender appointment that I want to be included in the contract, they still missed updating our electrical, tiling and kitchen culture selections.
• They miss to add the bath mixer tap that we want for our bathroom.
• The plan for our facade render colours were not corrected as we had it approved by our DRP.
• They have not reduced our site cost based on the soil compaction report that they asked us to get from our developer
• Our main entry door cost $5000 which was way more expensive than the sales quote.
• Our timber laminate flooring upgrade went up to $10,000 from $8,000 because they forgot to add the family room in the price and they also added another $500 for floor coat. We decided to drop this timber laminate upgrade and do all our flooring post hand-over.

What's to love?

• Our BC has been very helpful in terms of guiding us in weighing which upgrades we should keep and which are best done after hand-over. She's been very understanding and patient about our concern for budget.
• She offered to facilitate sending a copy of our signed contract to our broker for loan approval.
• She's been very lenient to us about our changes even after the contract has been signed and very open to us having post contract variations without any charges.
• She offered option to lower our site cost by levelling our site down by 300mm, she said this will significantly reduce our site cost. This was a good option, but we turned this down as we prefer to have the more elevated house.
• Our six star energy rating cost was $3,400 only. Another great thing is this provides double glazed windows to our house except the bedroom windows and the picture windows in the kitchen and dining room. All the double glazed windows will also be upgraded to awning windows.
• Our BC told me not to worry about penalty if we will be late for the June site start as she will work out to have it waived.
• Our BC was very honest to tell me that their upgraded timber laminate flooring was very expensive and that I can find cheaper, better quality and choices from other suppliers. She said that this is easy to do post hand-over and they will leave the skirtings for us cut or un-cut based on our preference.
• Our BC thought that we are building a Lifestyle range house instead of Advantage range. She told us that the building process that we have been taking all along has been the Lifestyle process hence, the loads of accommodation regarding structural variations and changes with our colour selections. She should know this by heart but were just happy to follow the Lifestyle process!

 A few days after this contract signing, our land settled after more than a year of wait! Woodlea has been very good in meeting their target titling date, we just got delayed by one month which was pretty good from what we have been hearing.

No major dramas with our settlement. Our broker, Loan Studio and our converyancer, Scali Conveyancing has been very good in making sure that we can settle on time and not worry about anything. We just needed to update our payslips and application forms with our broker.

A few days before the settlement, we made sure that our funds for our share in payment are available in our checking account. The day before the settlement, we brought the cheque to our conveyancer. It turns out that we need a bank cheque, not a personal cheque so we rushed to our bank to order a bank cheque.

Right after the settlement, our broker sent us a text message to congratulate and inform us that our land has settled! They also sent us an email with all the settlement documentations.

Mind the peg! We got rushed into checking that all our pegs are in place before the settlement. We've been visiting our block  too often but didn't know what to look for. We just took this task seriously, the day before the settlement and we found one missing peg! This could have cost us $650 to $900 from what we've been told. We reported our missing peg to Woodlea and they have since confirmed that one was really missing and they will have it re-pegged.

3 Pegs at the front

3 pegs at the back

                                                     Missing Peg!                                                     

Porter Davis Price Increase: July and August 2017

So here's the run down of Forsyth 35's price history since we started talking with PD.

• 06 August  2016 - Our first visit to Forsyth 38, the base price then was $238,900. 
• 13 August 2016 - Our first meeting with PD sales consultant. Overnight, the base increased to $240,900. Our sales consultant assured us that she secured the old price for us because she started the quotation for us before the price increase.
• 3rd Week of October 2016 - We requested to be transferred to another sales consultant because our first consultant injured herself and we were warned about an impending price increase. The base price increased to $246,900 and the promotion packages were also changed. We opted to switch over to the new base price and promotion packages as based on my computation, the new price and promotion will cost us the same as the new promotion packages cover all the things that we want to upgrade plus we can get the full house render for just $4,999
•  December 2016  - Base price was $249,900
• February 2017- Was $251,900
• March 2017 - now $252,900
• May 2017 - now $253,900
• July 2017-now $270,900
• August 2017- now $278, 900

On a side note, the land prices in Woodlea, where we are building our house, has also been shooting up as they open facilities and services. At the moment, they have opened all their display homes and we heard that they will open another set. Go West cafe has been serving great coffee. We now have 2 parks in the estate. Bacchus Marsh Early Learning Centre has started operating this school year. The 2 footy field construction is well underway too! With these deliveries, the price of a 540 sqm lot based on Stage 28 and 29 release is now $295,700 way higher that what we got our land for!

I don't know how aspiring home buyers would be able to keep up with these increases. Our salaries have definitely not increased this much in the last 9 months! 

Land Title Registration

After more than a year of wait and a month of delay from expected titling date, we received an email from our developer on 27th April  that our land has finally titled and they've received the registration. This means that our settlement will happen in 14 days.

Our conveyancer promptly rang me on the same day to bring the good news and reassure us that we are all prepared for the big day and that our finances are well looked after by our broker and lender.

Today, we posted the mortgage documents that our lender sent us as final requirements for the loan processing. Hopefully, everything will go smoothly as there is penalty for any delay in settlement.

Pending Contract Appointment

Our contract preparation and appointment booking went into stalemate since the Thursday of Easter long weekend. As soon as we have decided on which upgrades are worth keeping and which we will do after hand-over, I sent a message to my BC. My email came back with auto reply saying that she'll be on holiday 13 April to 27 April. There you go... and she didn't even warn us the day before I was talking to her on the phone!

I tried to talk to her manager and see if she can help us finish our contract and at least,  book us an appointment, but I was unable to get hold of her on the phone. As I was sending my email to her, another consultant sent me an email to ask about our plan for the porch flooring, driveway material and letterbox to be included in the design plan for our DRP's approval.

I emailed her our plans and ask her if she can help us send our list of request to the draftee and estimator while our BC was away. She said that our lists looks extensive and the management told her to wait for our BC to avoid any miscommunication which was fair enough. I just hope that we'll still have enough time to finish the DRP and Council approval and start our house within June or we will incur $1000 penalty per month of delay.

My list was really long but the recent changes were really not many. The list just included all the errors and notes from our tender appointment to make sure that they'll all be corrected or updated.

Our BC should be back today and fingers crossed, she'll be able to attend to our contract within this week!

Our Block was Overvalued!

Great news from our broker! Our land was overvalued at $13K more than our purchase price! We've read a lot of stories from our Woodlea residents FB page about their land and house being undervalued, so we're rapt that ours came back overvalued. This is one less headache for us.

We are now finalising our house upgrades in preparation for our contract appointment which was already rescheduled to give us more time to think them through.

Out and about in the West!

Our BC cancelled our contract appointment today because we decided to delete the flooring promotion package and the carpet underlay. We will keep the upgraded timber laminate flooring Provincial Range Van Gogh for most part of the ground floor, but we will have the carpet in the cinema lounge and first floor done after hand-over. She said she will need to have to order another 6 star energy assessment because we are changing the carpet and this won't be ready for the contract appointment.

We decided to spend the day to check out tiles, flooring and fireplace suppliers in Sunshine and Footscray.

Our first stop was at National Tiles in Sunshine. They have the tiles that we selected in our colour selection which was called External Alpine Latte. It's a porcelain tile, 600 X 600mm in size and made in Australia. For our porch floor, porch pillar and alfresco floor, it will cost us $793 for the tiles, $50 for the grout and $40 for cleaner. He advised us to talk to the the tiler first about the rest of the materials like glue and weather proofing before buying them.  The sales man said labour cost can be around $1,500.

He reassured us that it will be an easy job and any professional tiler will be able to do the job after hand-over.

Estimated Post Hand-Over Cost : $2383 excluding waterproofing, primer etc
PD Charge for Porch Pillar, Porch and Alfresco Flooring: $5,000

We decided to just do the tiling after hand-over.

Our next stop was Western Distributors also in Sunshine. This warehouse has very good carpet selection. For a very good quality, thick carpet with thickest underlay the cost is $7,360.

We found their timber laminate flooring selection a little limited.  For a timber laminate that has the same thickness as Van Gogh, 12mm with colour and style similar to it but not quite, the cost is $5,586.

Estimated Cost : $12,946 ( Upgraded thick carpet and underlay and thicker timber laminate flooring)
PD Cost: $9,999 (with Cat 1 timber laminate floor and Cat 1 carpet)
PD Cost: $16,026 (with upgraded timber laminate flooring and Cat 1 Carpet))
PD Cost: $8,116(for upgrade timber laminate flooring, no carpet)

We decided to keep the upgraded timber laminate flooring as we really love how it looks and blends with all our other colour selections and we will just do the carpet after hand-over.

Our final stop was in Sneddon, Footscray. We were asked during our tender to provide the specifications of our fire place and we thought we will just drop by this shop to view the models and ask about installations as well. As our fireplace will be in a small wall in the living room, we will just get a small unit which is around $4,500 to $5,500. Installation will cost $1,000. The mantel is around $1,000 and the stone at the bottom of the mantel is around $800, if we will buy these from them. It would be lovely to have this fireplace on our first winter at our home sweet home, but with the many things that we need to prioritise after moving in I won't stress if this won't happen!  

PD Contract Appointment Cancelled Today!

There's no more looking back once our contract was signed and keeping this in mind, we have been reviewing our selections and our budget. We also want to pay 20% deposit of the total house and land value plus whatever will be undervalued by the bank to avoid paying any Loan Mortgage Insurance (LMI).

As a standard practice, changes are no longer allowed after the Tender document has been signed. Our building coordinator sent me an email after our tender appointment that she will still let us make changes. This could be because she knew and understand that we were caught off guard during our tender appointment after they added around $15K cost (additional $9K for site cost, added $2.4K for goverment requirements and added $2.5K for more bracing due to high wind zone area). We came in prepared with want we want and what we can cut-down. We were also expecting some more cost but not that much.

So, the day before our contract appointment, I thought of just leaving the flooring package that we chose and just do it after hand-over. I've read in other blogs that this can be done and there could be a few work involved but it can be done. This will cut our cost by arounf $16K. (Flooring Promotion $9999, Carpet Underlay $1211, Upgrade Flooring to Laminate Provincial Van Gogh $8116) Less: Credit of $3300. After checking the cost with some suppliers, I found out that cost can be cheaper and quality even better. I told my BC that we will do this.

She also told me that our 6 star energy rating cost is $3.5K and our main entry door was $4K.

After talking to her, the thought that we will not have the timber laminate flooring that we really love was breaking my heart. I don't really mind the crappy carpet that goes with the package. With this in mind, I thought why don't we remove the flooring package ($9999) and the carpet underlay ($1211) and just keep the Provincial Laminate Van Gogh and this will only cost us $8116. We can have a better carpet installed later. I talked to my BC again and she said this is OK She will need to know the specifications of the carpet for another 6 star energy assessment.

She said that we can't have our contract appointment without the 6 star cost. She's not seeing any changes with the cost as it will still be carpet, but they just need to have it reviewed again. We agreed to cancel our contract appointment today!

I sent her a carpet specifications that I saw on the internet for 6 star assessment last night and we spent today visiting National Tiles (for our external tiles), Western Distributors (for carpet and laminate flooring) and Sneddon's (to get our fireplace dimensions).