Home and Builder Selection

Choosing a home builder is a crucial stage in home building, this can make or break your dream house and turn it into a nightmare. Coming from Asian background, we believe that a pleasant experience during the house building will pave the way for a pleasant and harmonious living in the house.

On our first visit to Woodlea, we also checked out their existing display houses. That time, there were only 2 builders, Mimosa Homes and Carlisle Homes, with their 4 display houses. Before that, we visited Metricon in Aspire Estate. A month after our land purchase, we also checked out the display houses of Metricon, Porter Davies, Henley and Boutique Homes in different display villages such as Taylor's Hill, Werribee, Point Cook, Sunbury, Mernda, Clyde North and Berwick Waters.

One important thing that we need to consider in choosing our home is the house siting in our lot. We have a good sized lot but the shape was a bit irregular, it has a huge frontage of 20 meters which tapers to 12.8 meters at the back. This was quite tricky with the house siting given the developers design guidelines.

We were also checking out the online reviews of these builders at productreview.com.au to see what their customers say about them.

Based on our display homes visits and customer feedback, we shortlisted Carlisle Homes, Mimosa Homes and Boutique Homes.

• Carlisle Homes
• Pros: 
• They have the highest customer rating online with a score of 4.6. 
• They have house designs that will exactly fit our land. 
• They have a very good promotion at the time we were selecting.
• We like Carlisle Homes.
• Cons:
• Their site cost was very high, at almost $34K.
• We heard that their upgrades cost is more expensive than other builders.

Some Carlisle Homes that we liked:

Amberley 27

Broadway 27

Arlington 27

• Mimosa Homes
• Pros:
• They have a good customer rating at 4.2
• They have an impressive display home at Woodlea.
• They charge fixed site cost of  only $10K.
• Cons 
• They need to modify the dimensions of their display home to suit our lot, or
• We need to choose the smaller version of the display home.
• The budget fixed site cost sounds too good to be true and the quality of the home might suffer.

The Mimosa Homes that we liked:

Saba 260

Rochester 277

• Boutique Homes
• Pros: 
• They have good customer rating at 4.2.
• My husband has a friend who built with them and she's very happy with her home.
• They have a house design that we like. 
• Cons:
• They couldn't fit the house size that we like, 28 sq and they can only fit a size 26 sq in our lot.
• Their promotions and inclusions are not as good as Carlisle Homes.
• The facade that we like would cost additional $17K.

Some Boutique Homes that we like:

Barcelona 28

Marseilles 28

St Tropez 28

Our Dream House

Even before we bought our land, my husband and I already have a picture of our dream house in mind.

• We want a house that is light filled, with high ceiling and lots of windows. 
• It should have 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and 2 toilets and a 2 car garage. 
• The teens should have a place to study and relax.
•  It should have plenty of cupboards, drawers and storage space. 
• The kitchen should give us a lot of space and the feel of being a chef when we feel like it, of course, why not?      

We also prefer a single storey house. There are only 4 if us in the family and we find that 2 storey houses ,with a minimum floor area of 39 squares, are just too big for our needs. We don't want to be strangers and just see each other during meal times. Big house also means big space to clean which I don't have the energy and passion to do most times and big houses also means bigger utility and maintenance cost. That being said, I also like the grand and imposing look of double storey houses so I don't blame people who choose to build them.

Our Woodlea Land

Our land is in Woodlea, a new development in sleepy leafy Rockbank that claims to be the fastest selling community in Australia and we heard that they really sell lots like hotcakes!

We are in Stage 14 and the street name sounds pretty posh, Gilderton Esplanade. The Esplanade is a long road that snakes through the Deanside Wetlands and Reserve and this is what we really love about the land. The lots in the block were our land was would all have big yards and we would all be facing a reserve!

At this stage,everything is still in the drawing plan and we're hoping that the wetland and reserve will be developed and maintained the way we imagined it.

Our Australian Dream

We moved to Australia five years ago and just like any migrant here, it's been our dream to have our very own home sweet home. Fulfilling our dream has not been an easy job for us considering the rising property prices, the changes in the government grant and the fact that, Elmer and I needed to take turns in studying and working part-time as we plan our career changes to secure more stable jobs in the health industry.

We persevered and worked hard to keep on saving for our ultimate dream and so five years later, the dream is slowly becoming a reality. We can almost touch it and feel it and very soon we will be able to actually see it!

I really wasn't keen on owning a new house. I prefer to buy an old established one with a big yard and a nice garden and there wasn't a day that passed that I did not check domain.com.au for new properties on market. I religiously kept a shortlist of properties that I was interested and on days that Elmer and I are not busy, I would request him to drive me around to check out the properties which are usually in Delahey, Burnside, Burnside Heights and Caroline Springs. There were a few that we liked but not enough to make us fall in love.

Elmer was more interested in a new property being the picky and meticulous person that he is. We visited Atherstone, Modeina, Aspire and Infinity but we always find something that we did not like about them. 

And then, we decided to visit Woodlea and we were hooked!  On the day we went, there were a few lots that were available which was a big surprise as we heard how hard it was to register and purchase a land from them. It was not just any land, it was a land that ticked all our checklist : good sized, in front of a park or reserve and facing east. I really have a feeling that we were meant to have this land, we were there at the right place, at the right time with this land waiting for us!

There's just one hurdle that we needed to go through before we finalised our purchase, the land has a big frontage that tapers off at the rear and we needed to make sure that the house that we want, Amberley 27, will sit properly in the land. 

As they say, if something is right, everything will fall in place. After a couple of emails and meetings, Carlisle Homes confirmed to us that Amberley 27 just fits perfectly. It was literally a "just" fit mainly because Woodlea allows the porch to sit half a meter on the front setback. With a big relief, we paid the full down payment and so here we are and moving on with our dream!