A Close Call - Almost No Mercer!

A day after I wrote the last Entry Metricon issued us with a breach notice due to the delays with the bank. It played out something like this:

Bank Finance
27th Feb 2009 - Signed Metricon Contract, and dropped off contract to Mortgage Broker. We have 30 days to get signed bank contracts and council approval to make the contract unconditional.

15th Mar 2009 - Started to follow-up with Mortgage Broker to see how things were going.

27th Mar 2009 - Now our 30 days are up, luckily Metricon realises the delays with the banks and thety are really busy as well and gives us 2 weeks grace period. I have notified the bank that I need this actioned ASAP and they have 14 days to finalise my loan, keeping in mind they have had it since the start of Feb.

17th Apr 2009 - I've been following up with the banks non stop for the last 2 weeks and I have got no where, in fact they have barely worked on it, it has spent most of its time with the Insurance companies.

22nd Apr 2009 - I finally get the formal approval, however this isn't good enough for Metricon they give me 2 days to sign the docs, however the bank need 48 hours to process the docs and send them from Adelaide to Melbourne.

23rd Apr 2009 - Continually follow up with the bank and broker and get no where. Nothing happens 1 day out from our deadline.

24th Apr 2009 - Spend the day on the phone to the broker, call the bank a few times to follow up and find out the docs were finally sent. However it is late and they won't arrive in Melbourne until Monday. Call Metricon and I am advised that it is too late and that unless my docs are in my customer service co-ordinators mailbox first thing Monday I will be breached. I booked an appointment at the bank first thing on Monday morning the 27th hoping the docs would be there.

What does this mean? Well we weren't issued with a fine which is normally 1.5% of the value of the house, instead it just says they will cancel the contract and we would have to buy the house at the current price. Because we got smashed with LMI, that's further down we would have had to cancel the contract and possibly choose another house or take out some of our upgrades.

At this point it wasn't looking good and the blog name would have become irrelevant because it wouldnt' have been our mercer anymore.

I called Metricon about 11.30am and was seriously considering flying to Adelaide to sign the contracts on the 1.00pm flight at a cost of about $1200 which would have been cheaper than any fines we received, plus the pain of choosing another builder or modifying our house.

27th Apr 2009 - After a really stressful week, worrying weekend and a nervous morning we drove to the branch to our 9.30am appointment. Casey called on the way there as we were advised to and after what seemed like an eternity it was confirmed that our documents had arrived. We promptly signed the documents, finished our first home owners grant form and went up stairs (luckily I work in the Westpac building) to send off our signed finance contracts to Metricon. After clarifying a few points about our land amount I received the confirmation email that we were all good to go.

We literally scraped in by a couple of hours, I was advisd by Metricon that if I didn't have the contract in by the 3.00pm mail run I would receive a notice in the mail.


Council Approval - Report & Consent
Our garage height on our neighbours side is 15cm higher than the rescode regulations so we need council and neighbour approval to build it. The reason this happened is because we had to remove the eaves on the side of our garages to not infringe on our neighbours property.

5th Mar 2009 - Took title of the land.

6th Mar 2009 - We dropped off our report and consent forms to the council. Normally they say
to allow 1 week to process 17 days for neighbour to appeal, 1 week to advise.

22nd Apr 2009 - We had followed up a few times however Casey followed up again and was advised that our neighbour on Monday requested an extention for 5 days to receive feedback from her builder if this was ok.

23rd Apr 2009 - I called the council and after about 3 calls that day I finally got onto the right person, and he actually called me back at 5.15pm and was very helpful. He advised me that initially the letter had been sent to the wrong person as Villawood had sold the block to a different person and the council had the old records. After realising the mistake the council found the correct person a few weeks before and only gave them 7 days instead of the 17 days to approve the request.

The catch is that the neighbour didn't leave a forwarding telephone number and the council couldn't follow up. They didn't have a problem but couldn't approve the request without speaking to our neighbour. I mentioned they were building with Symonds and the council actually called Symonds on Friday to find out her details. The council said they would contact me on Friday to let me know how they went.

24th Apr 2009 - I called the council about 11.45am, they had managed to find our neighbours phone number and were waiting for a call back. About 2.30pm they sent through the fax with our approval, they were really, really helpful and did us a favour by faxing through the letter rather than posting it. This was again a close shave, if we had to wait for the mail we would have missed our deadline and breached our contract.


The Conclusion:

• Don't use a broker, they try to maintain relationships with the bank more than they want to help you. That said, ours did his best, but not as good as someone from within the bank.

• If you use a broker, you always need to go to them, that means any issues you have 2 years from now, you need to do through your broker, probably not the most convenient option.

• Follow up, follow up again and again, and again!!! We did and it was probably only because we hassled people (just enough) that we managed to scrape in.

• We went through 7 months of planning to literally scrape through by a couple of hours from having everything pulled out from underneath us. On my earlier point about putting a deposit down early, I definitely recommend this to get a discount on the house, but be very careful we came within 5 hours of it being of massive consequence.

• Be prepared for many delays that are completely out of our control. We had no one come back to us at any point with any issues, in fact they told us our situation was pretty clean cut, it doesn't mean they'll process your loan quickly though.
  

Where to from here...well Metricon have 30 days to get Building Approval and then 21 days from then to be onsite...the countdown begins!!! I need a beer!

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It's been about 16 months since we put the deposit on the land and about 8 months since we put the deposit on the house. Since then we've picked our colours, settled on our land, sought finance etc. This blog will go through what's happened so far, hence the title.

THE LAND / THE ESTATE:

The Good

• We were lucky and had an excellent experience with Joel from Oliver Hume. Joel was very helpful during the entire process of buying and has even provided excellent after sales follow-up when we've needed some advice. It was Joel who put us on a waiting list for our block and reserved it for us when it came back onto the market, if it wasn't for him we wouldn't have been able to secure the block we did.
  
  
• The estate is excellent and we're really happy. We decided to build in Alamanda Estate in Point Cook, http://www.alamandapointcook.com.au.
  
  
• We have full access to a recreational facility that can only be used by residents who live in the estate. It includes a fully functional gym, a pool, spa, tennis courts, function room, cafe and childrens play area all for a relatively small body corporate fee.
  
  
• The gym has the latest in equipment and it is the top of the line commercial. The treadmill even has a screen built into it with a running track, or mountains or whatever else you want, an ipod dock, tv and radio all connected into the Fibre network. You can also upload your fitness profile from a USB stick to the device so it knows who you are. It's also opened from 5.00am until 10.00pm via swipe card which is very flexible.
  
  
  
  
• The estate has its own intranet site where residents can chat on a forum and book the recreational facilities, this is useful and creates a sense of community.
  
  
• The estate anticipated issues with Broadband so ran fibre into the Estate which we're taking advantage of. The other great thing is that they selected Opticomm as the provider instead of Telstra which means we have flexibility in who we connect with and it is much cheaper to install and ongoing costs are much cheaper also. Fibre To The Home (FTTH) is not very common at the moment and the current Government solution is to only run it to the street so this means we get true broadband speeds up to 100mb.
  
  
• The estate has the highest point in Point Cook which looks out over the CBD and the Bay. The slide I think is about 30 metres long and is a great feature along with the wetlands and parks.
  
  
• The estate has the largest display village in Victoria and also has various community events including a Christmas party, I never mind free pizza and Nando's.
  
  
• The location is great only 20-25 minutes from the CBD. It's about 20km's from the city and also on the right side of the city to get to Torquay quickly on those nice summer days.
  

The Bad

• There isn't too much bad about it, the estate ran a little bit over in obtaining titles due to delays in the subdivision but that is expected, no biggy here.
  
  
• There's no ADSL capacity in Point Cook due to Telstra not upgrading the exchange. The exchange is an old POTS network and I would say that because Telstra have a monopoly over the area there is no great rush to upgrade anything. This is really hurting everyone in the area and even the Wireless Next G network is basically unusable due to the number of people on it.
  
  
• Transport in the area isn't that great, Zone 1 is only a 10 minute drive away at Laverton but due to V-line trains sharing the line I think I'm going to try to drive into the city early after we move.
  

The Ugly

• We have had some issues getting a drain cover flush with the surface, we were told that after we built it would be at ground level but the back of our block is actually the highest point against the back fence so I don't quite get that, however after about 2 months of going back and forth between their solicitor and our conveyancer I've given up and I'll fix it myself after we start building.
  
  
  
• We have also had some trouble getting a hole filled in at the front of the block, the solicitor for Villawood hasn't even responded to the request even after approximately 2 months of trying so again I give up, I'll contact Joel and see if he can help. The ironic thing is there is a massive pile of dirt only about 5-10 metres from the hole and a heap of heavy movers about 30 metres away so I don't understand how it is that hard.
  
  
• The solicitor for Villawood hasn't been very helpful at all, that's essentially the reason this stuff hasn't been fixed.
  

THE BUILDER / METRICON:

The Good

• The thing that we loved about the Metricon designs were that they had very open plan living and we liked the fact that the kitchen and living areas were also central to the house, the quality of the finishings were also very good and Studio 501 now renamed Studio M was a great experience.
  
  
• Unlike Henley Metricon are willing to make changes to the house design and they were willing to cut off our rumpus move walls etc, all for either no charge, a credit or very minimal cost. An advantage compared to stories I've heard about Henley.
  
  
• Our sales consultant Nathan was great and really helped us a lot during the buying stage by clearly mapping out what our costs were going to be, even the hidden ones that no one tells you about. His estimates for flooring were actually above what it costs us which was great that he over anticipated as we saved a bit here.
  
  
• HOT TIP: When we were looking around to buy in August 2008 the house and weren't expected to take title until January 2009. Nathan from Metricon convinced us that we were best to put the deposit on the house then to lock in the price even though it is only valid for 150 days. We did this and the house price has basically gone up $10,000-$15,000 for our facade and we've only paid $3,000 in fines that so that was a great gamble that paid of. My tip to anyone would be to lock in the house as early as you can and be prepared to pay the 1.5% penalty. Read the bad for the gotcha though!
  
  
• The staff at Studio M were great. We had Kelly who was terrific and very patient. It actually took us two attempt to finish everything because we got stuck on the kitchen colours. We ended up spending the most on the kitchen because we need to look at it every day. You'll have to wait to find out what we went for but I think it will look great. The carpets and floorboards were easy to pick and the staff were very helpful. The victory blinds were expensive. The cutouts in the walls were $1,800 and $3,000 per blind, so $5,000 there alone. I think we'll be able to get this a little cheaper elsewhere. The driveway lady was a little direct and probably not very helpful, just wanted to get her job done and move us on. Questions weren't really welcomed..within reason. We were happy with what we come up with though.
  
  
• Metricon have been flexible with the delays we've had with finance and council and Teresa our co-ordinator understands thte issues we're having. For a while there we ran into some issues, but you can read about that in the Ugly!!!
  
  
• The tile selections at Beaumont tiles were fun and relatively simple we picked a another bathroom we wanted to copy whcih made it easier. They were helpful and it was painless.
  
  
• Metricon have a great client site that you can log in to and track your progress.
  
  
• All of the approvals and surveyor reports have occured seamlessly in the background, they take care of the lot.
  

The Bad

• The fixtures and fittings although a lot of them, the default ones are somewhat average. The upgrades are expensive but you would expect that anywhere.
  
  
• Our electrical appointment was good but we didn't really get much "expert" advise it was more just someone plugging in pictures of where you wanted to put stuff. The electricals are very expensive but theres not much you can do about it. Definitely leave out light fittings and external lights if you can avoid it. We put in the downlights and paid a fortune for it, but it would have been painful and almost as expensive afterwards. As a guide a normal downlight is $15 per light plus approx $45 for installation. We paid $45 per downlight plus $50 for installation per light. You can see that would add up pretty quickly across 50 downlights.
  
  
• It is disappointing that we can't have simple things like an Alarm installed, or Ducted Vacumming during build which would save us a lot of money because Metricon won't allow sub contractors onsite that aren't their own. They will sell their own product and you can only have this installed if you use them, but beware, they buy it wholesale and sell it for more than retail. You would actually be better off doing all of this stuff afterwards. I was quoted $1,400 for a basic 4 point alarm system and they just slapped in sensors whereever they wanted.
  
  I had a quote through someone I was recommended to and they quoted me $800 for the same alarm for for $1,400 - $1,800 a full 8 point system with setup, window points, etc..basically the bees knees.
  
  
• When we purchased the house and had 150 days Metricon charged us 2 months in fees even though we signed our contract only 1 month afterwards. This is because you pay the fees up until the contract is unconditional 30 days after you sign the contract. Keep this in mind.
  
  
• One of our tiles was discontinued, there isn't anything we can do about it but we had to book another selection appointment, it only took 15 minutes but it is a bit of a pain, nothing seems to be going smoothly.
  

The Ugly

• As part of the fibre being installed to the Estate we needed to get an Opticomm subcontractor through Techlife onto site during the build process. Metricon are the only builder that DO NOT allow subcontractors onto site. This is ridiculous and although I know why they do this in this instance I couldn't actually install a phone line or my tv until the house was done and it would have cost me a fortune to have the fibre put in. All other builders don't have an issue with this from what I know it is only Metricon.
  
  The thing is it is only a policy issue, legally they have to let you onto site. I called the Building Advice and Reconcilation line which advised me that Metricon would be fined if they didn't allow me to install the phone. After I raised this Metricon tried to tell me it was unsafe and after speaking to their National OH&S Manager he agreed it was no different to letting Telstra on site and the company had insurance anyway. After another 2 weeks Metricon finally made the decision to allow me to use Techlife to install my data cabling, tv and telephone but only after a lot of pain and many nasty phone calls. Part of the problem started after my customer service co-ordinator didn't understand my requirements in October when I told her about it, she gave me a flat out no you can't do that without even understanding my requirements. This was by far the worst part of the process and it was very stressful.
  
  After saying I wouldn't sign the contract though at the end of Feb unless I had a resolution common sense finally prevailed. For this I can be thankful but if you're going to build with Metricon BEWARE, they will give you grief about sub contractors because they use sub contractors not their own employees and as a result I guess they just don't trust anyone and they also want more money through mark-up not to mention no delays to building so they get paid.
  

FINANCE

The Good

• We got a 0.7% discount by going for an offset with credit cards etc for a $350 annual fee. This still worked out cheaper than going for a no fee loan over the longer term due to the interest rate discount. If and when we have children we can also take a honeymoon period from repayments with no fees. ANZ for example have a longer waiting period and charge you an application fee, got to love additional fees, even though they had a lower annual rate.
  

The Bad

• We used a broker, which meant all our paperwork was filled in for us, but I wouldn't use a broker again. It wasn't a simple established purchase, I also re-financed a propery and they got our phone numbers wrong in the system so Westpac couldn't call us when our papers arrived for signing.
  
  
• We put in our paperwork a little bit late, approximately 4 weeks before title settlement however we ended up running over settlement and were almost penalised it was only due to our great conveyancer that saved us. The broker and Westpac were very painful to deal with only because as far as Westpac are concerned we are using a broker so we have to go through them, however the broker escalates and nothing happens. We also found it hard to get regular updates and had to call the broker a bit. If you go direct to the bank you bypass this issue. for the most part brokers can be good but for us it created pain.
  

The Ugly

• Westpac gave us pre-approval in Feburary and it is now the middle of April and we are still waiting for final approval a month and a half after providing all of the paperwork. Despite escalating the loan it is going nowhere. We are going to be fined by Metricon again and even though we have given Westpac and the Broker dates weeks out from our deadlines nothing has progressed.
  
  
• Westpac valued the land $20,000 more than what we bought it 16 months ago, however valued the house $20,000 lower due to the mortgage crisis. The LMI they are charging us however is based on what we paid for the house not what it is valued at which means more money for them. The swing is about 15% in LVR and about $6,000 - $7000 extra in their pockets. The are bloody rip off merchants and there is nothing we can do about it. Dodgy bastards.
  
  
• Westpac calculated our LMI incorrectly on our landloan, infact they basically charged us more than double....BEWARE! My broker is still yet to resolve this one.
  
  
• Westpac are trying to charge us about another $600 - $700 in stamp duty charges without telling us what they are for. They expect payment in 30 days and my broker is following up but I haven't heard a thing.
  

COUNCIL

The Good

• The process for the rescode approval was relatively easy and the council was friendly.
  
  
• I have called up to ask a few questions about water tanks and front yards etc, the council were very helpful and friendly.
  

The Bad

• It normally takes 1 week to process a rescode application, 14 days to wait for neighbour approval and 1 week to finalise for a total of four weeks. It has taken 3 weeks to process the application, 14 days to wait for neighbour approval and we're still waiting. This may take 8 weeks which is delaying the start of construction. Then we're going to have to wait the same time for building approval. This sucks!
  

The Ugly

• There is no way you can push the council, you just wait, and wait and wait..........thsi is hurting our start times, luckily finance is taking ages so this one doesn't seem as bad. Finance is more critical though.
  

The background:

Finally I've got around to starting to blog our house adventures. Casey and myself will be providing regular updates on the progress of our new home as we go through the building process.

Below is a quick summary of the story so far:

The Land
After looking around for a month or so we found an estate that had a lot to offer including:

• Full Gym
• Pool
• Spa
• Functional Centre
• Parks

There were 2 blocks left in stage 5B and after driving around the area for a few hours we decided to go back to the sales office to enquire further. We found both blocks had been sold, however one of the blocks might have been coming up for sale again.

After receiving a call on the 13th of January 2008 that the property had become available we put down a deposit and signed the contracts on the 23rd January 2008.

The block had a 16 metre frontage and is 34 metres long making it 544sq.

We had already visited the Metricon Tarneit display where we saw the Mercer. We loved the open plan design and picked a block that had a Northerly facing backyard under the assumption we may buy this house. Funnily enough after looking at endless numbers of display homes we still selected this house.

We took title of the land on the 5th March 2009, about 1 and a half months after the originally estimated date.

Above is the current state of the land. Our neighbours have just started building so I'll provide another update over the coming weeks. We also have a tree at the front now!

The House
We looked at a number of builders including Metricon, Henley and Porter Davis. There were many others however the quality of the homes and the designs weren't quite what we're after.

We ended up going with the Mercer 32, we wanted a single story houes that was big enough to grow into. We have to have a 5 metre setback at the front so this gave us about a 5.5 metre back yard which we thought was reasonable given how many parks are in the estate.

As we go through the building process we'll let you in on why we picked certain features, it will be interesting to see how they come out.

We're currently waiting for final finance approval, Westpac are taking their time, and also for council and neighbour approval due to our garage being slightly higher than the regulations after removing the eaves on one side.

Above is the front of the display home. We have the same facade and we are rendering the same sections of the house. We have put the lights at the front in the same positions including the downlights which will hook up to a sensor. The render colours will be slightly different to go with the roof tiles and bricks we selected.