Finance updates

Today I received a polite reminder call from Stockland to say "remember, the contract goes unconditional tomorrow".
Turns out what I thought had been provided from the finance group in terms of an unconditional application wasn't quite the case.  Their recommendation was to get on to my solicitor to make sure if we planned on applying for an extension, that the letter be made out ASAP, as it had to be dated by tomorrow.

Some time between getting off the phone with Stockland and being able to dial the finance person, I recieved an email to say "contracts will be in the mail on Monday".
Hopefully that means I should have everything for land finance in front of me by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest.

Something else worth knowing is that because the unconditional date fell on a weekend, it actually rolls over to at least the next business day; and I suspect they may have one or two days after that (I'm not certain of the legalities).
But that's bought us an extra day when the finance hasn't really been on target.

Some color ideas

Even though it's been over three weeks signed I paid a deposit, I still haven't heard from Metricon's team for an introduction and to book times for color selection and the like.  We'll give it a while before putting too much pressure on them, but it is definitely already outside their own timeframes they give.

In the meantime I've been trying to get ideas for color selection when it comes to that stage, so spent a bit of time out at display homes today.
One thing was for certain though, the sales rep at the Metricon display I went to for these ones simply didn't want to know me at all after I told him why I was there and that I'd already made a purchase.  Even asking questions the attitude was completely "go away".

 This bathroom color selection I liked the look of, unlike some of the white top, brown base ones that were around and just didn't seem to work at all.  The small black tiles work quite well.

Here's the lounge and dining area of a Delta 24 in a much whiter style.  Obvious changes here - the very large folding door at the back of the house, and an alfresco area to the side. The 21 has a narrower and shorter lounge.

One of the tile colors I quite liked that were used in the laundry on the splashback.  They're the same tiles as the bathroom shot above, but in a nice shiny silver.

 Don't mind this wallpaper.  This was in the sitting room of a display Ascot 24, if memory serves me correctly. 

This was an interesting little modification we saw to the shower area of one display home, which I'm keen to investigate the viability of.

 Down the side of the house if you're building on a block the minimum size of what is required, this is pretty much all the space you'll have down one side of the house.

This was a nice little touch, though it merely adds cost and little in functionality.  You'll notice on this one the whole house has been rendered - oh, and if you're wondering how to tell the difference between whether a house is rendered or uses Hebel, just give it a knock with your knuckles.  If you feel like you could break a bone with a light tap, it's rendered, because right underneath that layer is prick.  If it's Hebel, it will sound slightly hollow, and you could even go as far as to say it feels lighter - it won't feel as solid.

 The Ascot 24 with a Chateau facade.  This is actually the facade I'd ideally like to have, but noone can seem to tell me what I'd be spending to do it up the way I want before committing to anything in particular.  In this case they've used large tiles instead of the deco bricks in some of the promo shots.
The colors are also somewhat similar to what I might like to consider for the render effect of the Hebel.

The hallway, study, and all bedrooms will be carpeted - I want to find out about this one we saw in one of the displays.  It's a nice patterned carpet that's not terribly thick, and being a dark colour you won't have every speck of dirt show up like someone's gone at it with a highlighter.

Lastly, tiles.  These were quite nice - some other places had glossy white tiles, and as soon as you put downlights above them you end up with spot lights reflecting off them.  Here you get a better effect and none of that glare.
The entry and living areas at base are timber look vinyl, so going to tiles would be a fair upgrade, but these might be ones to consider for the laundry and bathrooms.

Finance taking its time

Still waiting on finance to be finalised on the land.  Mistakes not to make:  Letting the broker put the loan in to a single loan that has 'conditional' on it.

At this point I need to ensure they split the loan in to two, because Metricon haven't even contacted me to arrange color selection etc.  That means there's no we're going to get through the whole pre-build process before the land has to settle.

That means they can have one loan for the land as 'unconditional', and one for the construction as 'conditional' if need be.

Meanwhile, across the road.

Looks like we have some soil tests done.  Little chunks like this taken from across the lot.  I haven't yet heard anything from Metricon, but we'll give it another week until starting to get impatient.

Of concern with the lot right now is two things I've noticed - firstly where the water is draining to, but also that the south-west peg seems to be missing.  At least I can't find it when I've looked, anyway.

Also very obvious is the rate at which the houses across the road are being built.  The ones in the picture are looking at the front of my lot, so they're the next street down.  A fortnight ago they were just a slab - certainly some serious progress there.  The next two white ones are Henley properties.  Is it unethical to race and bet on them like turtles?

I snooped around a bit to see what kind of backyard size they might have - although it's not particularly helpful without knowing what house they're building.  But on the two 14x32m you can see here, one has about 6m at the back, the next one has about 4, maybe a bit more.  You don't get much backyard.

Here's also a little spy shot taken from the street of the garage - I'd want to know where all that water is going to run off, though fortunately you'll probably stick a driveway straight over top of where it is right now.

It's been rather quiet

When signing contracts I was told that the process from there was that I wouldn't hear much from them for a while until contracts are ready, giving them time to get all that kind of thing sorted before we then proceed to colour selection.  I wasn't exactly sure how long this would be though - I had thought they had said two weeks, but wasn't certain.
I'm a pretty patient person too, not the panicy type, but thought just shooting off a quick email to check woudln't hurt.
The confirmation I got back nice and quickly was that it should be three weeks, added with the fact that Metricon it seems had a pretty good month in February and are rather inundated.

Not half an hour after the reply from my sales agent though, I received a call from the local area person in charge, assuring me everything was on track and that I'd hear from them within another week.
It did very much sound like they thought I was annoyed by the delay, but not the case - I'm happy to wait if that's the normal process.  But most interesting to me was that just a simple query was escalated the way it was, and warranted a call back from the next guy up.

The main thing I've been told by others is to make sure to stay on top of things if they look like they're lagging.  Gotta make sure of being kept updated of what's going on.