Well, it looks like we might go for it, putting the deposit on the land tomorrow

I think we are also going to go with Coral. Build time 16 weeks.

Spoke to both the land sales guy and the Coral rep and they answered a long list of questions that I have had time to prepare.

We looked at some other blocks today and non of them compared to ours, really happy with the choice we have made.

I still think that we must be mad, but its soooo exciting

I think that there are a couple of other minor issues with corner blocks.... 1 is increased traffic noise. The other is encountered when you wish to renovate / extend. Some councils are very strict on modifications that change the external "street facing" appearance of the house.

To be fair though, these are very minor issues.

Because the house is at the back of an already established estate we would not get much traffic, we will not be on a main road and all there will be behind our street is is acreage and bush.

I have weighed up the pros and cons but to be honest I think that for this block we will have more pros.

My advice is spend a few days reading some threads on here:

http://forum.globalhousepricecrash.c...hp?showforum=9

We were going to buy before June, but I'd rather risk housing prices increasing by 10% than losing 50% in the next few years!

We put a deposit on the land contracts drawn up OH delivered them to our solicitor yesterday. She said it was all ok and just added one other clause in. If they agree to that then we can go ahead and sort the house out.

Watch this space.

If you still have the contracts check the wording on start date.

Say a contract says build time 12 weeks, 12 weeks from when? approval of plans, within 30 days of approval of plans, whenever it suits them....

Loads of people get caught with this, build time sounds fabby wabby, but that is from when they start, make sure that is clear.

Thanks for that, we haven't got to that stage yet though.

Our land is due to be registered mid May. The solicitor put in a clause that if it isn't registered by June then we get our deposit back! This is where alot of people fall down, people wait months for land to be registered and although we can wait until May/June we won't wait forever!

It pays to have a solicitor check out your land contract.

[QUOTE=jad n rich;7501382]If you still have the contracts check the wording on start date.

Say a contract says build time 12 weeks, 12 weeks from when? approval of plans, within 30 days of approval of plans, whenever it suits them....

This can be a problem, it took over 5 months for our plans to be approved!!!

Congratulations!

The work (stress?) starts now <g>.

As others have said, if you're building a standard pre-designed home, go through the specs and DON'T ASSUME ANYTHING! Do thread searches - people have found that things any normal non-Australian would assume are part and parcel of a house are extras, and charged as such. Things like skirting boards! And IIRC someone else found the included carpeting was just stuck down on the slab - no underlay "since they hadn't specified underlay".

Good luck.

My mate who's kind of in the trade says as a rule of thumb, double the base price and the time they say the build will take............

Gawd, has anyone got anything positive to say about building I am starting to get a little nervous. It is daunting to say the least.

If we had decided that we would stay in our comfort zone and not take on new challenges then we would still be in the UK, lol.

Thanks for the advise, it's much appreciated

I'll swim against the current of all these doomsayers and congratulate you. You will always hit snags, but these are things you just haven't foreseen. When you get to them you'll solve them.

If you worried about snags you'd never get out of bed in the morning.

Look forward to opening the first bottle of wine on your new deck.

That's ridiculous!

All those who have been through the process in Australia have had a myriad of hoops to jump through, and problems to overcome. To say that passing on their information to others - hopefully to prepare them and to help - makes them "doomsayers" is less than useful.

hello there, here is a thread that you might find useful.

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=747230

Myriad hoops turn up, myriad jumps you make. You still have to jump whether you know about them or not.