In December 2014 my husband & I bought a piece of land in Aspect Greenvale Estate for $270k, bargaining the estate down by $5k. Included in the sale was a special offer from the developer, PEET, who was throwing in landscaped gardens valued at $8k.
Our choice of land was a 16 x 32m allotment. In many new estates around outer Melbourne, this is considered a wide block. We felt we needed this. Our home in Sunbury was an old fashioned size block of 890m², so moving down to a 512m² block was a big enough change for us. Many blocks are 450m² or even as small as 390m². With a 16m wide block it gave us a chance to really make good use of the land and our plan was to find a house that was ‘fat’ but not too long. We wanted our backyard to be at the back, rather than a side backyard.
We immediately started looking through hundreds (feels like thousands!) of display homes all over Victoria. Our prerequisites were to have a lounge or office in the front of the home, and a kids retreat. I have a small business that i run from home where people do come to my home from time to time to meet me. Having either a lounge or office at the front of the home allows me to have meetings without interrupting the family, and these visitors don’t have to traipse through the house either.
So many display homes, so many weekends. Looking back it’s all a bit of a haze really. We found a few designs we liked along the way. We were torn between plans that we liked, but then the quality of their display homes tended to let us down. Or we loved the plans, loved the displays… but before we even sat down to discuss upgrades, the house was already out of our budget.
What was the budget? Well we had hoped to move into a completed house for $250k max! And that’s why our search was ongoing. I was always comparing one builders “standards” to the next builders “standards”. I even rang a few independent builders who were recommended to me through friends. All seemed that my budget was a bit of a laugh. And in hindsight, I guess it was. I wanted quality, I wanted a certain square meter (m²) home, but I’d set ourselves a budget that was quickly becoming obvious to be way too low.
With budget and costs put aside, our main hurdle was finding a home that suited us. So many home displays just didn’t suit our needs. Most had master bedrooms in the front which turned me off immediately. Others weren’t making the most of the wide block. We noticed a that the thin narrow homes usually had a very long hallway leading from the front door all the way back to the end of the house. This was also not an ideal style that we wanted. My husband would remark that it reminded him of a bowling alley and he felt like rolling the ball down.
I took to the internet for inspiration. By March 2015 I think I had looked at every plan by every builder in Australia. We finally found a plan we liked but it was from a builder in another state, Western Australia. The other side of the country. Through my internet searching though, I had found a builder here in Victoria called Ashford Homes, and they were open to seeing plans by other builders and modifying them to make them originals. And that’s what we have ended up doing. Over the course of the next 6 months many minor changes has finally brought us to the house of our dreams.
So while all the plan changes was happening, we were also trying to sell our home in Sunbury. When we bought our land in Dec 2015, we engaged with Aussie Home Loans to start refinancing our existing loan and include our new land. That was fine. But this Sunbury mortgage lender suggested using the services of a certain Sunbury Real Estate Agent to sell our home. We like to hear recommendations. You would normally take the recommendation on as a no brainer.
Well our selling journey ended up being a nightmare. We signed with this recommended Sunbury agent in June 2015 to sell our home. We told the agent that we wanted to sell for around $440-450k. Well with this agent, it took 6 weeks to receive just one offer after 5 or 6 open for inspections. We thought this very strange seeing as our home was well kept, had a recently renovated modern kitchen with European appliances, two living areas, huge block 890m2, at the top of a quiet immaculate court. Great home!
When we finally received an offer (6 weeks it took) it was for $435k and 1 month settlement. Being excited about our new build, we knew it was going to be a rush to pack up and move, but we took the offer, even though we thought it was at the bottom of our asking price. The Agent came to our home, we signed the contract of sale, Done! Well 4 days later I received a call from our Agent saying that the buyer wanted to pull out of the contract. Cooling off period is 3 days. So naturally my answer was, “bad luck it’s sold”. Supposedly the buyer all of a sudden had no money to buy the home (yeah pull the other one!). Something about the money being stuck in superannuation. How has 4 days changed this fact?? So I dug my heals in, informed my solicitor who was acting as our conveyancer, and let the paperwork wars begin.
Legally, if you have signed your contract of sale and the 3 day cooling off period passes, if you want to cease the contract, then you’ll need to forfeit the 20% deposit that you’ve paid to the seller. In this case the buyer had only paid 10%. The paper wars began between conveyancer’s, they expected us to give back the deposit paid, but I smelt a stench coming from the real estate agent. The buyer lost interest the day after the local papers came out, and in our Sunbury newspapers, 90% of the paper is made up of real estate Ads. I think the buyer found another home (cheaper) and she was changing her mind. But how can you do that to a family who has 30 days to pack and move (as per their terms of the contract of sale). We were half packed 4 days into the week. We were already looking for rental properties. I would not give in. This is a legally binding contract, and you can’t just pull out if you change your mind!
So 30 days later settlement passed, and we became $20k better off financially, but emotionally we were broke. We were back to the start again. Ashford Homes were looking for a deposit, but I was reluctant to give them this when our building finance hadn’t yet been organised. You see, if you delay the builder with late payments, they charge you interest. So even though we had some extra cash, i wasn’t just going to hand it over to Ashford. So we engaged a new estate agent, someone who had knocked on my door 3 weeks ago to say if my sale didn’t work out, she was more than happy to speak to us…. did this woman have a sixth sense or what? LOL.
I called her, engaged her to be our Agent. First Open for Inspection the house was sold for $5k more than first sale. 3 month settlement. Happy days. So settlement was January 2016. We moved into a 3 bedroom home, one living area, good kitchen but shit bathroom (no vanity bench top space or drawers). Looking forward to seeing our house begin!!
Next nightmare…. seeing as Aussie Homes gave us the Real Estate recommendation for the failed sale, I didn’t particularly want to engage his services again. On top of that prior to our home selling, , the re-finance of the new land and our home was calculated wrongly and I had to find $5k to pay at settlement. I had 2 days to beg borrow and steal. Thank goodness Mum & Dad helped out at this point. Not happy was Aussie Home Loans. How do you miscalculate so badly?
So I engaged the services of RAMS Home Loans. Reputable right? TV Ads saying their reliable brokers right? Well it took RAMS from January to mid March to get me a contract which then had a higher interest rate than first discussed, and all the profits of our sale had been rolled into the loan so we had no spare cash to buy furnishings, fences, extras etc. So at this point I literally cracked the shits and was lost for words. I could no longer be the bearer of bad news to my husband when he came home from work. This had been the 4th massive bombshell I had dealt my husband on his arrival from work in the past 6 months. I sat in a chair and my mouth was moving but no words were coming out. I could not believe we had been duped again.
I immediately called Westpac, and we had a building loan arranged within 3 weeks, signed and ready for building works to begin. We even have $30k of our own profits to use for incidental expenses. I ended up getting a better interest rate from Westpac because I made the effort to go into the branch and ask for a better rate. Our Westpac Loan advisor said she couldn’t give me better rates over the phone, but if I came in she would. And she did. She’s as excited as we are about starting building and sends me an email every 2 to 4 weeks asking about progress, this is really nice.
Moral of this story – not all brokers are good at what they do. In the end, one of the Big 4 Banks helped me financially and emotionally in the way I needed after being burnt so badly already.
After a lot of back & forth with plan alterations, we had our Ashford Home plans signed off and finalised in mid June. The colour selection day with Ashford Homes was fun. I had many of my choices in my head prior to meeting with them so i think this made it easier.
We are really excited to begin watching our home rise from the dirt and then move in!
thebuildingjourney 