Where to from here? Build Vs Established

The low val. forced us to rethink what we needed from our new house.  My husband was pushing to buy established, we found some houses which were semi-suitable, but we have so much stuff to fit into a house and whatever we found there was always going to be some compromises regarding space, storage, colours, kitchen etc. 

Our main needs were :

- larger garage with rear access for the boat/jetski/trailer
- 4 bedrooms with a study (study preferably downstairs)
- preferably three bathrooms and powder room
- swimming pool, or room to put a pool in
- rumpus room downstairs with enough space for our oversized pool table
- my husband wants a balcony

I persisted in researching practically every builder out there looking for a plan that could be slightly modified as cost effectively as possible to suit our needs. 

I literally went through every double storey design with all the builders, visited many more display homes. 

On the shortlist were Hotondo, Carlisle, Orbit and Henley. 

We got in touch with Hotondo after a recommendation from a friend.  They are a franchise builder and will fully customise or modify their plans to suit.  We absolutely loved the façade on one of their designs, love a good skillion roof, so I set about modifying the internal layouts to suit - needed a fair bit of modifications.  The base price seemed reasonable however when I looked at the inclusions brochure the inclusions seemed very budget and basic.  I could easily see the dollars mounting up to way above our newly revised budget. 



Hotondo Seaspray Façade

Whilst waiting to go through my changes (the builder was away so had to wait till they were back) I continued in my search.  Went to local displays and was not going to go in one display as I had a pre-conceived opinion of this builder being more budget, but my opinion was soon changed.  Enter the Orbit Aspire. 

This design ticked all the boxes, could be modified to fit a pool table (combine media & study), upstairs could be customised to include a study, two bedrooms with walk-through/shared bathroom, and one bedroom with an ensuite (as well as the master and upstairs living), and I could bring in my own appliances.  The display styling was similar to what I would attempt myself with regard to colours and furnishings. 

What I was also blown away by was the level of inclusions as compared to the Waldorf, such as 40mm stone, higher internal doors, larger skirtings, to name a few. 

My favourite part of this house was the lounge right next to the stairs, and how there was a sloping bulkhead under the staircase, gave the living area some character, and the large platform at the bottom of the stairs as displayed was a great feature as well. 

The base price was quite reasonable however once we started making our changes it soon became evident that we would have to make too many compromises to make this house work, as there were still things I wanted to add to the quote.  One of the things I have been finding in my new quest that some builders charge a premium for most of their facades, makes PD façade price list seem not so bad.  I was offered a reasonable discount, but after being told floor coverings were not included (even though I had a copy of inclusions saying the contrary), I pointed this out and was then I was offered the discount or floor coverings?

 

The sales person was quite helpful and considering our situation I was allowed to go to head office to see the selection centre beforehand if I wished, to see how colour selections would affect our budget. 

Still maintaining my research on our shortlist of suitable plans, another house on which was the Pavillion by Carlisle... tbc.

Something happened on the way to the Waldorf...

Okay, so it has been a long time since my last blog post, I had so many more posts planned with further colours pics, electrical details etc. 

We hit a bit of a roadblock - all was going according to plan.  We had signed the contracts and were waiting to get our mortgage documents to sign to get everything started, unfortunately the bank valued our build at $120K less than cost, which would mean we would have to put in a further $100K+ for the house to go ahead.  All the while that this was going on I was in a dispute with my current landlord over the rental house we moved into while our house was built.  Too long a story to go into but two VCAT hearings later, and six months after we moved in we finally received compensation of one months rent.   

Anyhou back to the story, we challenged the valuation but the bank took six weeks to get back to us, and they did not lower the valuation at all, our broker shopped around with other banks but it was still going to cost too much to continue.  So, after nine months of going through the PD processes, and investing so much time and effort on this house, we decided to terminate our contract (this itself took a few frustrating weeks) with Porter Davis, losing $9K in the process.  We did not want to put everything we had into building this house, and risk having nothing in reserve to complete it, and to complete the pool, and in case we need something to fall back on. 

I may have a seizure every time I drive past a PD billboard, but apart from that it is all good, we have found another house to build which meets our requirements, and more importantly will be much better of financially than if we did build the Waldorf.