Stockland Highland

Off to the land sales office.

Here's where we're at:  Metricon have said to us "okay, give this lot number to the sales rep, and we'll see if w can go from there".

First thing we do - "Hey, is this lot still available?"
Bugger - no it's not.  Yeah, saw that coming.

Okay, so what else do we have available?

We were given another option of an equivalent size blocks, which was apparently the only one left, but it was opposite some town houses - wasn't terribly appealing.  That was a problem for the time being.

Fortunately the prices we were being given on other blocks were reasonably similar - but we still had to find a block that actually works.

The other thing about both these blocks are that they likely wouldn't be ready to title for maybe six months.  Not really a big problem at this stage.

Problem we found out almost straight away though was  that we had discussed a slightly larger version of the house build after the initial quote - and it wasn't going to fit on the blocks we discussed.

Doh.  Guess that means that for now there's nothing immediately available.

Introducing Metricon

The next stop was to be a meeting with the land developer, but the person I had to meet was busy, so made arrangements to drop by later.  That allowed time to have a look around some other displays, so the others went through the two large-ish displays Metricon had open at Craigieburn, while I got talking to the sales guys.

Their attitude was a whole lot better - and started from the right way, with a "how much would you like to spend?".  Giving a "ideally $360, but max $380", that gave a good starting point, with the rep able to say "okay, here's some options to make that easily doable".

The design we mostly started talking about happened to be one they had on display and I'd been through, albeit a smaller version - the Delta 24 being the one on display, and the 19 being what we got talking about.  They were able to also find a lot for that to fit on with a listed price, so that when I went to talk to the developer I could details on its location etc.

Heyley designs

Henley's displays gave us some good ideas for what worked well, and what to look for in any future designs.  For example, the Sienna has this awesome configuration of Bedroom 3 and 4 separated by a study.  It's a shame it's only really done in that single design.

Study area in the Henley Sienna Q1

It also reminded me that taking my brother on these visits isn't always the smartest idea :P

Non-standard option: Idiot wearing a prop as a hat.

The Henley Lexi 3

After dropping in to the Henley display, where I previously hadn't considered Henley at all, their designs grew on me quickly.  While there were quite a few that were nice, the ideal one was the Lexi 3.  Question is, was the budget anything liked what they claimed.

The Henley Lexi 3

I made an appointment to sit down with one of their reps and go through the numbers, to see what an advertised price really meant.  They had initially told me to allow $30-40,000 on top of the listed price.
In short - when you see $x, you certainly can't budget on it being anywhere close to that - even before you start adding options.

In pricing, we decided to be more realistic and look at the Mode 4.  Ultimately that wasn't going to help much though - with a $154k base, we were coming up with figures just over $200k, and that's just the basic version with no options.

The Henley Mode 4

What annoyed me about Henley's pricing was that the "inclusions" required an amount be paid just to get those "inclusions".  This to me screamed of so dishonest that it was likely to be the case all through the process, getting stung for everything left, right and center later on in the process.

Walking out of the Henley meeting and display had me a little dejected that the prices were so unrealistic - I decided to walk across the road to have a quick chat with Metricon, where things were quickly turned on its head.

Aston visit

The concern with some of the prices I'd seen listed in Craigieburn was the variation.  Why were some blocks $234,000, yet others were $180,000?  It made no sense. Ultimately a lot of that comes down to block size, but some of them could be identically sized and be significantly cheaper.

On the way to my meeting with Henley, I decided to drop in to the Aston land sales office.  I just hoped the land wasn't going to flood like the car park for the sales office was, forcing me to dance over what had practically become a lake :D
The short version is they had requirements that were a little higher than Highlands, so construction costs were going to be a little higher, but nothing extraordinary.

Finance

When it comes to the finance side of buying a house it's going to quickly get overwhelming if you've got no experience with this kind of stuff.  All this talk of LVRs and LMI, how much they'll let you borrow, the actual rate you'll get offered versus what they list, comparison rates versus standard variable rates... and then you have to figure out if you want a split loan, if you want any of that amount fixed, whether you have or want income protection...

To say it's confusing is an understatement.

Now because I can't give any financial advice, and explaining all this would result in a very long and boring post, I can only recommend you do what I did - go speak to a professional.  A quick on-the-spot meeting with  someone at NAB told me I'd have no real problems borrowing an amount in the ballpark of what I was looking at - which at that time was around 250k.  Of course, that quickly grew :)  More on that later.

Aston

Obviously whenever given a price, it's best to at least look around and see if you're getting an okay deal.  The prices I'd been given for Highlands were all over the place - a similarly sized block could seemingly vary anywhere between $180k and $235k!  I didn't understand why, so kept digging.

During my digging, I came across the Aston estate.  I'd seen the stage 3 release, but then one day happened to visit the site while I was at work.  What's this, a stage 4 release open soon (18th Feb).  But this is strange - there's a complete list of prices.  And these ones appear more reasonably priced.

I called the rep, and found out what was going on - to say it was a bit of an "oh crap" moment on their end would be an amusing understatement.  The short version was he wasn't aware they had been published, and had to then chase up getting them removed from being publicly listed :D

Being me, I of course copied all this info down before it disappeared, so I was looking at info a bit more like this:

Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 410	333m²	14m	$184,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 411	313m²	12.5m	$175,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 412	313m²	12.5m	$175,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 413	350m²	14m	$185,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 414	350m²	14m	$185,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 415	350m²	14m	$185,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 416	313m²	12.5m	$175,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 417	313m²	12.5m	$175,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 418	350m²	14m	$175,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 419	400m²	16m	$165,000
Release Stage 4 Round 1		Lot 420	350m²	14m	$169,000

Much more reasonable prices to work with.  But more importantly, prices I could go back to Highlands and talk about with.