in the words of Pow… ZOMG!
I updated Wordpress today, and in the process DESTROYED everything including my gallery. Fortunately, I took backups, but then they wouldn’t reinstall properly. GAH! Got it sorted in the long run, but there may be some residual weirdness, for which I apologise!
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My lightbox plugin is acting up… so the popups may be a little weird!
Our lovely finance broker emailed us last night. Our luck with fax machines seems to continue. Apparently her fax machine couldn’t cope with sending the number of pages required to the bank, and hence she had to go hand deliver it. This unfortunately means we won’t hear about our finance until Monday now!
Whilst we had hoped to hear back before this weekend (so we could go see the builders), we’re still glad to have a day when we’ll be confirmed as having mountains of debt… finally!
So fingers crossed for Monday I guess! In the meantime I will continue drawing designs for gardens that I will no doubt never get around to building!
I hate waiting 
We’re still waiting for an answer on our finance….. it’s driving me mental! I know Angela is doing everything she can do, and she did tell us it would be a slow process given our complex situation…. but still!
It’s frustrating because we want to get started on choosing stuff! We know what we want, so we want to go ahead and get moving. We don’t like inaction. It’s hard because there are so many things we want to get moving, but obviously we don’t want to get too far ahead of ourselves. We need money before we can spend it!
I guess the upside is that having a week or two without actual “house” stuff to think about, I’ve been putting a little bit of thought into our garden. It’s a pretty big space. 17m x 13m, plus 2 alfrescos and a front garden. We’re not gardeners by a long shot. So we won’t be planting a heap of flowers and shrubs and things that need maintenance. The plan is to have a pretty “native” looking backyard. Native being “green thumb talk” for messy.
When I think of what my backyard should look like, I remind myself that I’m stuck in the city, and how lucky I was to have a big backyard and plenty of camping trips when I was a kid. I think I’d go mental growing up in some of the estates around these days! I like to think of what it was like in the bush. I think of the sound of running water, lots of rock, slate or river pebbles around, scrubby paths, long brown grasses, lots of birds, hollow logs. Everything hues of greys, browns and greens. Lots of sounds and textures. Not ornamental by any means, but that feeling of it all being “real”… like this is where we’re supposed to live..out in the dirt and rocks. Then I try and see all that in my backyard.
But I don’t want to just plant out the whole yard as one big scrubby area, because I do want grass for the kids to be able to have a game of cricket! When i was a kid, we had a driveway running down the side of the house with a gate half way down. The perfect batting pitch if the centre of the driveway had been freshly cut and rolled! I can’t imagine Thuy being too thrilled about having a chalk stumps drawn on the new garage roller door somehow!
So that’s two things. The third thing is we used to have a lot of BBQs when I was a kid. I loved eating outside. It was great to be able to run around and come back for a snag or a rissole occasionally and then run off to play some more cricket. So I really want to have this separation between the “yard” and the “entertaining” area. A sort of formal area that flows through to the natural looking yard area.
I’ve drawn up a few sketches of what I think will look good…. but without knowing where we’re up to with costs and money, they will no doubt change considerably!
It’s funny that things I would not normally care about are suddenly tremendously exciting. Just like how new parents seem to go slightly mental when their new baby is on the way, so to it seems that expectant home owners go a little “weird”.
We took Thuy’s little sister to our block of land over the weekend (she stayed with us one night), and it appears that our crossover is complete and that we now have a footpath out front of our block! WOOT! We’re also happy to see that the 3 big pipes have been relocated It made for a good photo for our site header, but I wasn’t looking forward to rolling them onto someone elses lot! 
Still waiting on finance to be resolved………………………………………………………….
Uh oh! We’re buying stuff for a house that not only isn’t finished, and isn’t started, but that we haven’t even agreed to pay for and don’t even have money to pay for!
Well it’s only a picture I suppose, but it’s a bit bigger than it looked in the shop!!
It means, “the noble moral characters of ancestors should & will be inherited by their descendants” .
We thought it was nice So now all we need are some walls to put it on
We actually went out to look at a closing down sale at a shop called the “orient express” near the corner of Church and Victoria streets. Lots of nice stuff and all pretty cheap… but unfortunately we had no where to put any of it just at the moment. We went post a “chinese vase store” which also had a dozens of these writings for sale. This one was already framed and we loved the look of it and the meaning… so it came home with us
Thuy and I drove over to our block of land last night to check out our crossover (see below), and I raised the point of how strange it is that we managed to get a block AT ALL at this estate. It’s actually quite perplexing…. and more than a little disconcerting.
We got a letter yesterday informing us that Stage 3 is about to go on sale at Manhattan Place, and it is expected to be titled in around October or something crazy like that. Stage 2 is set to be titled some time in August (if i remember correctly), and Stage 1 in March…both are now entirely sold out. We got one of the last 2 or 3 lots available. The thing that perplexes me is how we managed to pick up a block at an estate that has been on sale for at least 8 or 9 months. The estates that we looked at first in and around Brimbank Gardens and Truganina are all practically sold out, and what land that is remaining is either tiny or not being titled until August or later.
So it begs the question, what’s wrong with Manhattan Place? The blocks are huge by today’s standards, it’s not a terribly big estate which means not much traffic, the land is dead flat and isn’t full of rock, the building restrictions are very relaxed…. so what gives? Did we miss something? Is there something wrong with the land? Did we make a big mistake?????
So I’ve been scratching my head trying to work out what the deal is. I’ve come to the conclusion that there are actually quite a few reasons this estate wouldn’t suit a lot of people, and the reasons are certainly enough to put off quite a lot of people.
1. Most estates have proposed schools and child care - MP doesn’t.
2. Most estates have their own little shopping centre - MP doesn’t.
3. Most estates have a footy ground - MP doesn’t.
4. Most estates are nearer to the city or a freeway - MP isn’t.
5. Most estates have pretty lakes and lovely landscaping - MP doesn’t.
6. Most estates have community facilities like a gym, sports club - MP doesn’t.
7. Most estates are advertised extensively by people like Delfin - MP isn’t.
8. Most estates are already established and have happy residents - MP doesn’t.
9. Most estates have at least a few display homes set up - MP doesn’t.
10. Most estates have at least 10 reasons why they’re better, but I can’t think of any more.
I could go on… but I think you get the point. None of these things particularly matter to us. Being just out of Werribee means there certainly isn’t a shortage of any of the above.
But then I could see what our problem really is.
Most people when they buy land look at far more than just how many square metres it is. To a lot of people, all these facilities are actually very important, and quite reasonably so. Manhattan Place is certainly the bare basics of land, hell you don’t even get a landscaping or fencing allowance! But I think we’re ok… because just like choosing our house, we try to block out all the “other stuff” and focus on what we really need. We have a tennis court, spa, pool and gym right here in our apartment and never use them anyway. And if you are far enough from the shops or school that you have to drive, then it doesn’t really matter how far you’re driving anyway? I guess with a lot of things we miss out on the “extras” that plenty of people enjoy, because we have a very tight focus on what are exact needs are. If it doesn’t contribute directly to the end goal, then it is superfluous and doesn’t enter into consideration.
In hindsight, I can see that where we’re planning to live isn’t the “ideal” location for us, for all sorts of reasons. As they say, the most important thing in real estate is Location, Location, Location. But I think we’re lucky that because we don’t really give a shit about real estate! I just hope that the spot we have chosen doesn’t turn out to be a mistake, or that we missed something that everyone else saw…. maybe we were just lucky to be in the right place at the right time? Only time will tell!!
In other news, our finance broker came back to us with our apartment valuation. A wee bit less than we’d hoped, but still equates to a 25% for the 2 years we’ve had it, and that’s pretty good I say. The reason this is important, is because that growth, plus the amount we’ve paid off, plus our deposit equals over 40% of the amount we need to borrow for the new house and land! WOOT
As mentioned in the last post, we have requested our driveway crossover be built on the northern side of our block rather than the default south side. Bill from Oliver Hume had said to us that the builders had already begun work on the footpaths and crossovers and that our driveway was definitely going to be place on the north side of the block. This was straight from the guy doing the concrete apparently
In the interest of a good night sleep, we decided to go and check out whether our driveway was REALLY being built on the right side, so that if it was mid construction in the wrong location we’d be able to do something about it.
Needless to say, this is the happiest I’ve ever been to see a bunch of metal and wood laying on the ground!
Our crossover…. ahhhhh
Our soon-to-be driveway crossover
Where our driveway NEARLY was before we got it moved! This would’ve had our house with the living area facing south… bad!
The footpaths are just about all done in stage 1… we couldn’t have had better timing!
Wow… busy day today!
First of all, we’ve had all the contracts reviewed by legal types and this morning went and handed them back to the vendor along with our deposit, meaning we have now OFFICIALLY purchased a block of land. Of course it’s not OURS until we’ve paid for it all… but that’s gonna be a month or two away… so we’ll celebrate a small step forward today anyway!
In other news, we’ve confirmed that our driveway will be built on the North side of the block, or the right side of the block (or left side if you’re facing the street). This was a fun one, because we’d had it confirmed several times that it would be placed in the correct location, but it hadn’t actually been amended to the contract. The problem being that it isn’t really part of our lot and isn’t really the councils problem because they don’t build driveway crossovers, and the estate can only build it in a certain location with approval from the council. It’s one of those nasty things where its not really anyone’s problem except the person who wants to move it. Anyway…..long story short, it is being put in today or tomorrow and WILL be on the Northern side of the block. Big thumbs up to Chris and Bill from Oliver Hume!
This morning we had a guy come round with a fancy infra-red measuring device to value our apartment. We’re hoping it is worth a heap more than we owe, as it is being used as equity against the new place. We don’t know what it is worth yet, but fingers crossed it is enough to ensure we have plenty of room with the finance!
Last one for today. We got sent a list of 5 references for our builder. Not written ones, I had to call up and talk to them. This is actually far better for us, because it means the builder doesn’t know what they’re telling us. Short story is they all love Urbanedge. A couple of them had built previously with “other builders” and had a lot of problems that were very hard to fix because it was practically impossible to get hold of the person who could actually help you. All correspondence for those mobs is via the office. Urbanedge apparently have you working very closely with the building supervisor, so if there are any problems they are identified early and fixed quickly.
One of the referees had minor problems with supply of their special custom fittings, and managed to work through it all with Urbanedge easily. To me, being able to work through a problem is far more beneficial than hearing that they never had any. Everyone knows that you WILL have problems when you build, it is just a matter of how you get them resolved.
So far so good!
Over the weekend we went and took a look at our display home again We got some photos this time (just off the mobile phone though)
Well we had our first brain fart today. We’ve been getting all our contracts and stuff organised and reviewed by our friendly conveyancing/lawyer types this week. Unfortunately, the conveyancer we used last time now works for a really big expensive law firm and is now not really suitable for our lowly “17 x 40″ block of land.
We were recommended another conveyancer by our broker Angela, who we then called yesterday to arrange them to look over the contracts…. but somehow as conveyancers they are not qualified to examine contracts, which is odd, because I thought these things were generally handled by the same place…..but apparently not. Anyhow, Angela the conveyancer (not finance Angela) uses a solicitor who they use and so we called her to get her to look, but no too busy! GAH! For the sake of completeness, the solicitors name was also Angela. Apparently, all females involved in property are called Angela, and all men in property are called Andrew… because we’ve had 3 of each so far!
But I digress…
Google to the rescue. “property lawyer Melbourne”. First entry was actually a website for a group we were going to engage the services of anyway, so we get in touch with them, organise all the details and send them through the PDF of all the contract BS that we’d been sent. Unfortunately our land sales guy neglected to include the section 32 for the lot in question… meaning that our very friendly lawyer Leonie couldn’t actually do much. So back on the phone to mr Land Sales who has been kind enough to fax through the documents to our friendly lawyer. Hopefully he hasn’t left any pages out 
So if all goes well we should hear back in the next few hours that everything is ok with the contract and we can go in tomorrow and sign up. When it comes time to do the house contract I hope we will be a little more organised!
UPDATE: He only faxed 2 pages of the section 32… so no, we won’t be signing up tomorrow!
