Building your New Home…The Easy Way

Okay, you have made the decision and you would like to build your first home, build an investment property, upsize or downsize. What do you do first? It’s always best to work to a budget, you will need to speak with your bank or finance broker – if you haven’t got one, that’s okay. We work with a number of financiers and we are here to help. After you’ve had your initial appointment with your finance person you will have a much better idea of how much you can borrow. Just because they tell you that you can borrow $700,000 doesn’t mean that you need to. This is probably one of the biggest decisions that you will ever make, so we need to make sure that we tick all of the boxes – and we are here to help.

FIRST HOME BUYERS?

HERE’S OUR EASY 7 STEP BUILD PROCESS!

If you are young, chances are that you don’t have children yet, but you may want to consider the possibility of this down the track? Nobody wants or needs to be ruled by their mortgage. In short, your mortgage should be the one thing that ensures that you get on with your life and hopefully will make things a bit easier as you get older (this is really important for first home buyers).

1. Once you are comfortable with the amount that you are going to borrow, we can start to look for land that fits your budget and will allow you to build your home. We also need to take into consideration if the land is registered and ready to build on or if it’s waiting for this to happen. Please don’t worry too much about this, this is what we are here for and our job is to guide you through this process.

2. Once we have found the land and you have decided which house you would like to build, we really get to work. We will site the house on the block to make sure that firstly it fits and most importantly, that it complies with all local government and estate guidelines. At this point you will need to pay your first deposit which is $2,400. This will allow us to engage the engineers to provide a full contour survey and soil test so we can then lock in the site costs (the site costs will be estimated up until this point). We will also draw up the plans for your new home.

3. Once we have the plans and site cost report, we get together to go over the plans to ensure that this is absolutely correct and we can make changes. You may decide to go with raised ceilings or you may decide to add the “designer plus ensuite”, you may like to add some extra power points or you may decide that everything is exactly as required. These choices are entirely yours.

4. When the changes have been made and you are 100% happy, we are ready to lodge to council and this usually takes 10 to 12 weeks (it can be quicker depending on how fast you want to go). You will at this point need to pay the balance of 5% less the $2,400 you have already paid. Wherever possible, we lodge our DA’s as complying developments and we are usually out of council within 6 weeks (this can vary depending upon each individual council). Whilst all of this is happening, you get to do the fun things, like colour selections!

5. We have a choice of around 60 bricks (standard and upgrades) and that is just for starters – we recommend that you start driving around looking at houses you like (take some pics) as this is really helpful when it comes to doing your outside colour scheme. If this is really too hard we can show you some pre prepared colour boards. Once you have paid your initial deposit, we will give you a colour pack which lists all of our suppliers and has brochures and guidelines to assist with this process.

CHOOSING THE INTERIOR COLOUR PALETTE IS A LITTLE BIT DIFFERENT.

6. We always recommend that you start with your flooring and work your way up – we do have a colour room at our Chisholm display and you are most welcome to come and have a look and we have samples that you can take away. Our suppliers, including Beaumont Tiles, also have fantastic facilities and colour boards for you to look at as well. You may like to set up your own colour boards, and even start a scrap book or pinterest page to collect all of your design ideas. You will then have a two hour appointment with our colour consultant. However, it’s best to be prepared and have a really good idea of what you would like and the look that you are going for. Once we have your “stamped approved plans” – we start your build within 21 business days provided that all essential matters are complete. That is, colour selection is done, finances are in order, all variations are signed off and anything else that is required to get us underway. You will be sent a text message and the countdown is on! You will be allocated a site supervisor who has reviewed your file and will be managing your build. You will be given a date to meet on site with your site supervisor and your sales consultant (most probably one of my team or myself) and then magic happens – this is a very exciting moment.

THE SOIL IS TURNED AND WE ARE UNDERWAY!

7. You will be invoiced at different times during the build (your bank will be aware of this – you will more than likely have a construction loan, which is the most cost effective loan for this process). Once the slab goes down you will be invoiced 15%, so make sure that you hand this straight over to your broker or bank so that they can arrange payment, as the quicker it is paid, the quicker we can get on with your build. Please know that you will have regular updates from your site supervisor and you are welcome to hold site meetings every three weeks if you would like to.

WHEN THE WALL AND ROOF FRAMES GO UP, YOU WILL BE INVOICED 25%.

Once the brickwork and roof is on you will be invoiced for another 25%, as per previous, it’s important that you financier continues to pay things promptly. We are getting close now – once the linings, kitchen, doors and architraves are on you will be invoiced another 20%. Once we get to practical completion, the balance of 10% is paid. At this point we have another site meeting with myself or one of my team plus your site supervisor and the house is yours! You will also have a 13 week period to log anything that wasn’t picked up during your hand over.

Our builder Perry Homes also offer a 20year structural guarantee – this is awesome! The most important thing to know is that we are on hand from start to finish.

What do you need to do? Just call us – Noel Simmonds 0418 169 800 and discover more about how we can make it easy for you!