Contracts

We arrived home from our holiday today to find a few emails in the inbox from our legal team and Plantation. It seems they were all busy while we were sipping cocktails cruising the South Pacific.

Our legal team have sent us a copy of our land contract and a heap of items to read over! But essentially it's all good to go come February when our land registers. YAY!!!

We also have an email from Plantation introducing us to our Customer Service Administrator. She has booked us in for our Introductory Information Session at Cosham studios, Our contract signing and our colour selection appointment.

We have also received an email from Your Home Consulting letting us know they will be in contact in a few weeks once we have our colour selections etc completed so they can book us in for our electrical appointment.

We have been to a few of the plantation display homes to get an idea of what we like and don't like. We have decided to go with Neutral colours, browns and very earthy tones we want to create a Balinese style theme through the house as much as we can on our very tight budget. Plus our current home where we rent, everything is White! White tiles, white carpet white walls, white kitchen, absolutely terrible with kids, so dark is favourable for us.

We have visited our local PGH Brick centre to get an idea of what brick we like. we discovered very quickly that everything we LOVED was not in our budget and the ones we did like were not permitted as per our land covenant :( At the end of the day, out of around 12 brick selections that are in our budget we can only select from 3 that are in line with our covenant. We are not fussed on any of them but it is what it is. I liked the Savannah with off white Mortar but Dan liked the Desert Sand with off-white mortar. I think so far we will go with Dan's choice as it does tend to blend in with the roof and gutter colours we like and given the interior will be dark it would be good to use a light brick for the exterior.

The roof colour we like is Dune with a Jasper gutter and Surfmist fascia. We have cladding on the front of the house over one window so will do that in either Dune or Jasper to tie it all in.

We are super excited to get our colour selections underway next week and take us one step closer to actual home ownership!

Our brick selection so far of Desert Sand with samples of Dune roof, Jasper gutter and Surfmist Fascia

The Beginning

In June 2016 we decided to take advantage of the Government grant for first home owners in QLD. They are offering 20K to first home owners as long as you build a new home.

This is fantastic for anyone, who like us, struggles to save a deposit with 2 kids and rent payments plus the day to day living expenses.

We originally looked at a builder called Integra homes who are offering a no deposit build...that's not one cent you need and you can be in your own home. We applied and within 24hours we had pre-approval.

2 weeks later after visiting their display villages across south-east QLD we chose out home, chose our land on the Sunshine Coast and had all of our inclusions picked. Next step was to submit our final costings to the finance broker they use and get it all signed off.

This is where we hit our first snag with finance. I am Self employed and have been for the past 8 years. Unfortunately, my accountant did a fantastic job last financial year and bought my tax down. This, however, looks bad for the banks when it comes time to borrow money. Becuase of my low income (on paper) our borrowing capacity went very low and would mean needing to move around 30min away which is not an option for our kid's schools etc.

It was at this point that I thought to think outside the square. We were able to borrow a small deposit from a family member and add to what we had in the bank (about 5k). that with the 20K government grant gave us a healthy deposit. I then called RAMS and by chance, they had a different lending criteria for self-employed and we were able to borrow a healthy amount again that would see us in an area we liked and only 10min drive from school.

We looked around for around 2 months, getting quotes from different builders, doing a cost analysis to see where we get the best deals with their inclusions and extras. After much going back and forward, Wayne from plantation homes Bells Reach came to the party and had an offer on the table that was outshone by all the other builders.

We had decided to build with Plantation homes, we knew what home we wanted which was the Retreat Nouveau Q2. We would have loved the Nouveau Q1, however, the budget did not allow for this so now we just had to find land to fit.

After speaking for months with Bronwyn at Stockland, Bells Reach she let us know that there was one final block within our budget that would fit our home. We were able to put this on hold once we had pre-approval from RAMS which was now in process. Within a week we had a signed contract and paid our 5K deposit to Stockland. We now officially have a block of land.

We organise to go in and see Wayne at Plantation homes to finalise that process and paid our first $1500 deposit. We were told that it takes around 5 weeks for Plantation to get us in the system so we can organise a tender appointment. Once we have this we can take it to RAMS and apply for our "real" finance approval.

This is really happening.

Land Purchase 1st October 2016