Parked the Ferrari Out Front

Well obviously no news this week except to say a big Merry Christmas to everyone. Builders are now on holidays and we're anxiously waiting for the holidays to be over so we can see some action on our lot, funny isn't it, first time I've worked over Christmas and I'm dying for the holidays to be over. My assumption is it will be pretty quiet over at Jordan Springs for another week with the place getting busy again on the 9th of January. We may see some activity next week but I doubt it, I've seen the odd painter and carpenter there though so anything is possible.

On a side note if you follow my blog you'll also know I live around the corner from Jordan Springs and I'm over at Jordan Springs almost daily. You can often find me, my wife Peta and my little boy Jordan walking around nearly every weekend looking at all the new homes and playing in the park. Keep an eye out for the Ferrari though.

Thanks to my dad, Jordan received a cool little toy for Christmas which is perfect for the bush tracks and wide footpaths over at Jordan Springs. This electric car can be controlled by Jordan or daddy can take ownership with a remote control. We've taken it over their twice since he got it to let him drive it around. Not bad huh. It also has a stereo in it in which you can even plug your ipod into it.

We parked it next to my car and in the driveway so you know to keep a look out for it. Thanks Pop and Nana Lisette.

Have a great new year everyone. Hopefully we'll have more to share soon.

Here's a few more shots f my little one in his new car.

Pulling into our new driveway.

Woolworths Jordan Springs

Received a letter the other day about the DA application for the development of the new shopping centre at Jordan springs. Pleased to know it's going to be a Woolworths and not a Coles which is really going to help the competition in the area. I'm more a Woolworths fan as well so I'm pretty stoked about this.

You can view all the documents on the Penrith DA tracker site but here's some pictures etc from the various documents to give you a taste of what's to come. (DA11/1348)

Hepburn's wish of a Sold Sign

Well the last few weeks have been tough. We've been making sure everything is alright with our final plans, signing off on all variations and dealing with some personal issues that have been pushing us beyond our limits at times. The good news is there's light at the end of the tunnel now and we just received a nice email from Kurmond Homes.

I truly believe in trying to stay positive in all situations and showing respect at all times to people. At the end of the day we have to deal with other people and I think if you treat people right then you will be treated with the same respect. If I have one piece of advice I can give to anyone building it's to take that approach even as a customer. I've built a relationship with Kurmond homes and I don't go off my tree at them, I know they can make mistakes, they're only human and they don't mean to do wrong by anyone. I accept certain things take time and nothing is for free. This makes negotiating much easier, getting things done quicker, and if I need to push a bit on time they actually really do try to help out.

So this morning's email was simply titled.....

"Fw: Hepburn's wish of a Sold Sign"


I told Kerry at Kurmond Home's about all the issues we've gone through over the past weeks but never really pushed them to hurry up. About 3 weeks ago though I did mention that we had to have a slab soon to meet the Stamp Duty requirements. I then went on to mention how after all the drama's we've had we were really just waiting to get a sign on our land so we could get a photo, we didn't want anything except to be able to stand on our land with a sign that said Kurmond Homes so we could believe this was all real. Delfin did this for the first release and got everyone pictured with their lot putting SOLD stickers on their signs. But for the second release (mine) they didn't do this at all, instead we had to drive around to our street and look on the white pegs for our lot number. We were so dissapointed we couldn't celebrate this. I told Kurmond Homes (Kerry) this 3 weeks ago and said how I couldn't wait to even just get the fences up. I got the above titled email this morning with two pictures attached. You wouldn't believe how happy we were to see it.

As I said being a great customer also means a lot. I still really appreciate the service by Kurmond Homes.

Another Day Another Levy (Long Service)

Well it seems as someone who is building I should be responisble for making sure my contractors are rewarded with long service entitlements. You would think the $350,000 + would simply be enough.

From their website....
"The levy is paid into a fund administered by the Long Service Corporation, and from this fund, the Corporation makes long service payments to building and construction workers."


Seriously - why isn't their employer looking after it? I'm going to see what I can do about it.

A friend was stung with this the other day so I thought I'd better let everyone else know about it to be prepared. Heck that's why I'm blogging all this info, to help others while I learn from the mistakes for next time perhaps.

You can ask your builder to include it in your tender so you don't have to pay for it, perhaps some can still negotiate. Perhaps your builder just pays it and doesn't worry about it, I don't know. What frustrates me is why aren't the builders telling us all of this so we know what to expect. The levy is a long service levy payable to your council for any building works over $25,000. The amount is 0.35% of the construction price. So for my base $220,000 building cost, I will be up for $770. Your certifier will hand you the bill when they give you the construction certificate.

More details can be found here.

http://www.longservice.nsw.gov.au

$500 Infrastructure Restoration Bond

I got asked about this today and had forgot all about it. For anyone building in Jordan Springs (or any Penrith Suburb to that fact). Penrith Council have only recently introduced a new council bond payable to them which must be paid before you're allowed to get your construction certificate.

The bond is $500 and you will need to fill out the form yourself and even go out to your site and take photo's of any cracks in footpath.

The form and details can be found on Penrith Councils website. Here's a link if you wish to have a look. Make sure you have your camera ready. Once you get the receipt back send it straight into your builder.


http://www.penrithcity.nsw.gov.au/uploadedFiles/Website/Planning_&_Development/Forms/InfrastructionRestorationBond.pdf

Tiles and Stairs

Tiles
So tiles are a funny thing, be prepared for the shock of your life when you get the variation price. To be honest with your bathrooms I'd just go with the standard range and look to upgrade you main floor, bathrooms are much easier to come back to later. Gotta say Kurmond Home standard are pretty good, we were looking at an upgrade to Porcealin but the tilers are just way to expensive.I went into Manago and didn't tell them I was building with the builder (as if I wouldn't do this)

The Maths on our Main Floor Tile
Std Tile = $25/sqm (My allowance)
Upgrade Tile = $32/sqm
Upgrade cost on Labour $20/sqm
Kurmonds Margin = 30%

I have 100sqm so this should be easy right?

$7 difference for tile = $700
$20 labor extra = $2000

So Variation should be $2700+$810 (30%) = $3,510

My Variation Price = $5,190 WTF!@! (Yes I'll ask about them a bit later. I plan to challenge that and see what they'll do)


When I told him I was actually building with Kurmond the story changed big time, oh, ooh, ahh....umm...yeh well Kurmond have to get carpenters back etc so they charge for that. Yeah whatever, Kurmond have to do that even if your laying a standard tile you dicks. Like I said didn't really like there tile company, everyone else has been fair and reasonable, these guys seem like they just want to rip me off and tell me stories how if I was building with Metricon I'd be paying triple that. If you sell tiles to the public, you shouldn't be bumping your tile price up for home builders because you think you can milk them.

With the bathrooms we decided to roll back on the variation. Our total variation for tiles was $14,500 so you can see why, now we just have the $5,190 to look at and I've given up tiling to the ceiling, I plan to ask them for the lot (dye) numbers so I can do it myself after I move in. I got sick of arguing so we decided to pick from the standard. As you can see they look pretty good anyway.

Std range of tiles for Kurmond Homes, actually not to bad.

Stairs
So I admittedly stuffed up. In the sales process, all my ears heard was "Timber Stairs", yeh thinking to myself, nice wooden polished stairs will look so nice and are standard. I was an idiot. Timber can mean MDF, then carpeted. (As in at least not concrete). So off to the stair people we went, now having to look at making a small change to the stairs. These guys were great.

We're lucky in the sense we have stairs in between two walls so it makes upgrading a little easier and cheaper. What we decided to do was keep the rises painted and put a timber on the actual step only. Having timber rises in our house would have looked to strong seeing we've gone for warm colours and modern coffee colours and tiles. All wood stairs would have defiantly looked odd. The stairs get installed and it's up to the owner to organise to stain them, keep this in mind if you have stairs.

As for the hand rail I went with a rectangle type of rail which will also be put on the wall going up to the second floor, held by some chrome. Again keeping the modern sharp edge feel going through the home. Rails are the standard silver rails, timber balustrade with a chrome ring, these will be painted the same as the walls. I haven't got final quote back yet, but guess by the guy was about $3200, which is good (Hopefully it stays at that). A couple were in there at the time and they had MDF carpeted stairs and wanted to replace them, I was over hearing them and it was about $45k. Ouch!!! Do it upfront I think.

This is the type of look, painted rises and sides, but timber treads, more so because our stairs are between walls, our paint isn't white though.

Our posts. Kept it simple.

Rectangle hand rail, up the top of the stairs and also put on the wall coming down the stairs.

Steel posts, we won't have those circle looking things on ours.

Variations - anyone want to buy a Lung

I tried to prepare myself for this, I knew it was coming. Like walking into a dark bear cave knowing a bear was in there but you're being pushed in with your hands tied behind your back, being served as lunch.

Early in this process I researched variations, it seemed to me the average was about $20,000. You needed that much no matter who you were if you were looking to upgrade the "must do" items. Things that are so hard to do later that you almost have no choice. For example putting a porcelain tile in now might cost $5,000. Replacing your tiles later in the whole first floor might cost $20k-$30k. We saved hard for years and had $20k.

For those following my blog know though that all came crashing down when the bank reneged on our loan after it expired. Valued at the full price in December when we paid our deposit, re-evaluated June 16th this year, 10 days after it expired at 20k less. We kept saving from December though, and stillare to this day as we knew this was coming.

Problem is.......we don't have 20k.

Guess what, the variations so far (bare minimum) is at 18k. Anyone want to buy a lung?

So now we're not to sure how to handle it, we're doing our best to make sure we get everything and to be honest I think we'll get there somehow, you always do somehow. If your're building be prepared for this, it will make things much easier. Knuckle down and keep saving too.

As for a general update our house is council approved and we're just waiting on our construction certificate. The variations are all being finalised and we should be able to start building in the coming weeks if Kurmond Homes are ready.

Kurmond have still been fantastic for us and are doing their best, they still feel a bit under resourced at times though. Some of their suppliers are their weak point. Tile contractors are frustrating, not happy with the variation price at all. Probably more so because my old man does Kitchens and Bathrooms so I know I'm being ripped off.

Electrical was about what I thought but there seems to be a huge lack of knowledge with the Fibre to the home (FTTH) at Jordan Springs and with all the builders. For those who didn't know, Jordan springs is a FTTH estate and if you buy in Jordan Springs you must install it for your services. You're not allowed to have a TV Antenna on your roof at all, you must run your TV through the FTTH cable.

Speaking with a few people yesterday it appears Delfin and the government are having issues. Some people have moved in to Jordan Springs and have no TV, no phone and no internet. The sub contractors for the builders seem to have no real idea either. Trying to explain what I wanted was liking speaking chinese. I knew more about it then the contractor and to be honest that worried me. The deal in the past was that no matter who you were building with at Jordan Springs you had to use Open Networks to install everything who had experience doing this. They're now out of the picture and it seems like the builders can arrange it all now. That's ok but I'm not sure I'm getting the right thing which is a bit scary.

Oh well, if you have any questions let me know. I'll do my best to answer them. Once my variations are done I'll post them all up to.

Been a while so time for an update.

It's been a while since I posted an update, my wife and I went through a real busy patch with work and it's nice to be on holidays at the moment just spending the next two weeks at home cleaning up and getting our current house a bit closer to ready for renting it out.

As for an update with the house the plans are now in with council, they were submitted on the 7th of October. The Preliminary assessment has been completed on the 26th so I'm hoping it's now only days away from being determined, as long as they haven't found any issues.

The Penrith e-planning website is great. I keep an eye on what the rest of the street is doing and look at all the other cool houses going up nearby. It's nice to know what's going next door as well. If you know your DA number just type that in or do what I do and type an address in and search, then hit the property button so see all the DA's. The link is http://www.penrithcity.nsw.gov.au/ePlanning/Pages/XC.Track/SearchApplication.aspx

As for Jordan springs, it's coming along real nice. If anyone is interested in building and buying land over there let me know. If I refer people I can get $1000 for me and for the buyer. Always good to help each other out. Jordan Springs actually is selling blocks in the next section called the Northbridge 2 release today. There's 45 new blocks of land for sale. It looks like a nice spot too, it's the part where it will be heading up to the park on top of the hill. I went and had a look yesterday and I can imagine enjoying a nice stroll up that hill to the park, looking out west to the mountains. The picture in my head looks amazing.


We have yet to do our internal colours and electrical, Kurmond say they wait for the council plans to be approved before doing those to ensure there aren't any changes. Hopefully if all goes well we will start building before Christmas.

Once things start happening I'll be updating things more regularly.

Signing everything this week.

Well the bank stuff is sorted. Basically now everything is approved and we're good to go. Westpac came through at the end of the day after I basically said they were about to lose me and my wife as a customer and all our bank accounts.

Tomorrow night we head in to the bank to sign our paperwork, Tuesday we go into Kurmond to pay our first big payment (second) and sign our contracts. (After I get them to fix a few things)

We should be building by Christmas some time which is good. People who bought in Jordan Springs have 26 weeks from settlement to start building otherwise they maybe required to pay Stamp Duty they signed the stat declaration for. Ours ends Dec 16th so we're leaving it a bit late because of all our hurdles, don't worry though, if the builder knows they can arrange a letter to have the time extended but you need to let your builder know upfront.

We've done our tiles and we need to go back and do more (electrical etc), but it doesn't matter now as the plans will be off as of Tuesday so I'm happy.

On another note I've contacted open networks about what we need to do to connect he FTTH connection. Their website makes no sense to me.

Valuation for Construction Back

Another kick in the guts.......

Westpac have come back with an evaluation on our Kurmond Homes house being $30,000 less. This is another kick in the guts and strange seeing that to build similar homes from the likes of Eden Brea, Zac Homes or Metricon we would be paying 100k for the same style and size home.

With all the maths worked out this means we need to find another $16k to $20k now to build our home, before our grant runs out in 4-5 months. If you've read all my blog you would know the debacle with the land we had to use some of our own money for the construction deposit to get the land, roughly $25k. So if the bank/mortgage insurer evaluators didn't screw us in the first place we would be fine. But thanks again to the evaluators where now going to jump through some magic hoops again to get our home built. Taking the house down by 30k wont help either as the value from the bank will come down. We would have to drop $100k to have no issues which means going for a much smaller home, not something where willing to do for a difference of $16k. Keeping in mind we can afford the repayments easily and the bank was happy to lend the full amount until the evaluation came back.

After all this keep in mind we've already paid so much out of our savings. For the house and land so far we have paid out $60,000 of our savings, and we have about $30,000 left for our construction. So by the end of it if we find this $16,000 we would have paid out $106,000 of our own money up front.It's so crazy I should have not paid LMI at all once it's all done.


The bank manager (Aloka) is arguing our case because of everything we've been through and is escalating and trying to get us a better deal. We're expecting to hear something over the next few days. Oh well, off to figure out how we find 16k to 20k now in case this doesn't work. Next stop first though will be to another bank.