Land ahoy!

Virtually a 5 minute drive from our residence lies the Banksia Grove Estate. It has been under development steadily for the past 7-8 years and this is still ongoing in full swing. Every month or so, the developer releases between 10 and 15 lots of land, to be titled in six months' time.

On 18 May 2014, we put down a deposit on a plot of land in Stage 22 of the land release. Stage 22 was actually released in February 2014 with titles expected in July. The only reason we got it was because it was linked to a house and land package with a project builder (More about that later). Ergo, they'd locked it up and it was flagged on the estate website as "sold". We investigated the builder's design, liked what we saw, assessed it as suitable for our budget - particularly because of the plot of land.

So, off we tramped to the estate land sales office, plonked down our deposit and signed a contract to buy Lot 3641, Farnese Way, Banksia Grove, all of 300 m2. Don't bother looking it up on Google Maps - it doesn't yet show on there, although the road itself is in place with road signs, etc.

Since we managed to get land from the February release, we don't need to wait for six months, with titles expected in July. 

House hunting....

House prices in Australia are not high.

They're exorbitantly expensive. The reasons are myriad and you only need to throw this into the mix at a peaceful dinner gathering to turn it into armed camps full of raving mobs arguing their particular positions. Some even hold the position that houses are not expensive, usually on the basis that you can easily get housing finance for these prices. That's like saying the Mona Lisa is affordable simply because a bank is willing to lend you the money to buy it!

But, I digress.

House prices in Australia are horrendously expensive. It's not more than three or four months ago that we decided to start looking seriously at acquiring a home of our own. Not that we particularly consider renting a shameful or a undesirable situation. God has provided us a really nice home to live in, decent and reasonable landlords and well situated in every way. However, at some point you want to be able to do what you want with the place you live in - like being able to put up pictures on the walls, plant a tree wherever you like, not have a property manager waltz through your home every 3 months 'inspecting' it, etc.

So, we began looking. Virtually every little tinpot home seller with a couple of bricks in his/her house thinks its worth a fortune. Can't really blame them. A bunch of parasites called real estate agents engage in self-fulfilling prophecies to continually drive up asking prices - for no other reason than that they can always find at least one mug to pay that price. How many home owners have the moral fibre to turn that down?? Of course, you always have sane agents and owners - the only way you can really tell what's well-priced and what's not. However, price is always a subjective thing.

Anyway, we looked at a number of places. Liked some, even put an offer in on one for what we thought it was worth. The agent all but sneered at us, even after I pointed out the damp on the walls, paint peeling from the ceiling, etc, etc. Sigh.

Here we are now, after looking at umpteen established properties, we decided to buy land and have a house built on it. It is not cheap, but the advantage is that we can get exactly what we want - all new. There's something to be said about that, of course.