Saturday 11 August 2012

Who's That?

Driving home from work today, I saw a ute parked on the road up near our top gate. It was the surveyor coming to plot our land, hopefully to make sure it's possible to build here.

In our contract there is an allowance for 500mm over the building site included in the cost. If there is any more angle to the block then we need to pay for it (cut and fill costs). Apparently anything up to a metre isn't too bad - PROBLEM - our fall is at least 5 metres from front to back! Due to the size of the cut and fill, we now need to have a geo-engineer's report to ensure we can still build.

We're still waiting on the Real Estate Agent to get back to us regarding the sale of one of our investment properties (will post a link once it is listed). I am sure I'll have a heap to say about the Selling process - real estate agents are not my favourite people to deal with!

Friday 3 August 2012

Small Victories & Set Backs

Trying to attack a TODO list whilst working full time (leaving home before 6am and getting home between 6-7pm most nights doesn't leave much time for personal jobs during the week. For that, I rely heavily on my wife to chase up things! Thankfully amongst her full time role as mum and the time spent driving kids to things and doing stuff around the home, she finds time (and is willing) to chase these things up!

Locating the Lot plan was easy, we had collected a copy of it at settlement, so we could send that to the Sales Manager to get the ball rolling with the contour plan. Clearing the trees that have regrown where the old chook pens were (and where we want to build) - the request for quotes are out, just waiting for the people to come and assess the situation.

Getting the council approval is a bit difficult - I am not sure which way to go!! We could look to apply for a multi-dwelling property, subdivide the block into two (and have a house on each) or 'decommission' half the house so that it is small enough to be classed as a granny flat! The first option makes the most sense, but seems fairly complicated, the other two, well, I am not sure what to do with them.

The trickiest TODO - finance, well let's just say that is being tricky!! As it stands, without trying to sell an investment property or pay out existing loans, we couldn't do it! If we paid out the tractor loan ($700 per month) we'll be able to get the loan through, but only to $440k, $10k short of our minimum quote from Metricon so far, and that's before we look at fixings etc!

Our only option then is to sell an investment property. Thankfully even though the market is flat we could sell one of our 'long termers' and make a fairly decent profit allowing us to pay down some other debt and also increase the deposit. So, despite regretting having to sell an investment property 6 years ago, we're looking at it again.

We'll keep you posted!