Admin Adventures & The Contracts

Well a lot has happened in the past week to catch you up on. After securing our place etc. it was time to start to plan the 'shift over' from our current house to the new unit. We pick the Key's up for the rental on Tuesday, May 1st and will slowly begin moving things over during the week, with the big move and full clear out Friday night and Saturday morning, so this time next weekend, we expect to be fully moved in and for this place to be vacant.

I organized for the phone and internet to be disconnected from the cuurent house and reconnected to the rental for Friday, May 4th. The other half organized for the power and gas to be shut off on the 7th of May (incase we needed power while moving over the weekend) and for the new place to have it's power turned on Friday the 4th. If all goes well, it should be a fairly smooth transition and we'll hardly miss a beat. Fingers crossed!!!

Before demolition of the current house can begin, we need to have the electricity (which is currently an overhead supply), and gas meters abolished. We faxed in a form to do this during the Public Holiday this past Wednesday (ANZAC Day) for both Gas & Electric to be abolished. The catch is that the house must be vacant for the G&E companies to provide this service and even then (because they outsource it to seperate companies), it can take up to 20 days for it to happen from when the job is raised. We had a very nice customer service person who called us to confirm that we needed this service done and she said that she'd try to have the abolishment happen the same day as our disconnect, which would be the 7th of May. That would be the IDEAL situation, as we could then have demolition begin right away. If however it takes up to 20 days for them to come out and do the abolishments, then demo has to wait until it's done to start. Again, fingers crossed it's done the same day as the disconnection of these services (or very soon after)!

We also need to have the Electric company come out and install an underground power supply (commonly referred to as a power pit) as new dwellings are now supplied this way as opposed to the old overhead supply that we currently have. I also faxed the paperwork for this on ANZAC Day and called the power company that owns the pole and will do the work (AGL) on Thursday to follow up. All the paperwork was filled out correctly and we should have the power pit installed in about 2 weeks (again fingers crossed). That is not as pressing as the other services previously mentioned, as the power pit needs to be ready prior to Henley pouring the foundation. We anticipate it will be another 4-6 weeks before we are at the stage where the foundation will be poured. We'll keep you posted on how this all goes, so watch this space.

Also on Wednesday (ANZAC Day), we moved about 3 carloads of boxed and packed belongings over to the Inlaws house for a long winters nap! Today the father in law and I will be moving a couple larger items for storage and reviewing the contract.

Ahhhh the contract. Well, I had mentioned in a previous post that our newly assigned Administrative person that will be our liaison until we reach the build stage (which thankfully, rapidly approaching). Our Admin. has been the only downside of our experience with Henley to date. As far as an Administrative assistant goes it is our belief that this person either needs some more training, the workload reduced, an assistant, or all three! We have had to chase our Admin. for any and everything that is supposed be looked after by them and the latest item we've had to push was our contract. Our contract appointment is for Monday, April 30th at 9:00 AM. Henley's general process is to sign your tender, have your contract signing scheduled for approximately 1 month later and a copy of your contract will be sent to you 1 week prior to your contract signing date. It dawned on me on ANZAC Day that we had not received our contract yet and it wasn't going to arrive on a public holiday, leaving us the weekend to review it, if and only if it had already been sent by our aforementioned Admin. (not likely), or I called, asked the Admin. where it was and have them express post it! So, Thursday morning before I knew the Admin. would be in, I left a message, asking where our contract was and if they had it, they needed to express post it to us so that we could review it before our meeting on Monday, otherwise, we weren't going to be signing a legally binding document without the chance to review it! The Admin. called me back later that morning with some excuse (no matter what we have had to chase this person for in the past, there is always some excuse), about Engineering having a query about our slab (foundation) and that it was nothing or a non-issue. The Admin. would have our contract later that day and express post it to us so that we would have it by Friday! I could tell they were covering their tracks and probably wouldn't have realized they needed to send it to us without my reminding them that we existed and had our signing on Monday morning! Contract arrived early Friday morning and I told the wife that she'd better review our payment schedule because our Admin. had filled it out by hand and I didn't trust them as far as I could throw them. Of course, (without surprise) the wife found calculation errors that she had to call and make them aware of it. Our Admin. had put down that we had only paid a 'normal' $550 initial deposit, but had 'fogotten' that we were a demolition site and because of that had actually paid a $1000 initial deposit. This of course, affected every single calculation on the payment schedule after that, because it's based off of percentages of what has been paid already in relation to the total (we're talking pretty simple math here folks).

So, we are picking through the contract with a fine tooth comb (already discovering that some of our site costs have been reduced due to the engineer's revised calculations) but were not taken out of the contract paperwork, nor off the overall price. This however could change again after demolition, as we will have a second soil test done to make sure nothing significant has changed. We will be going over our contract with our Admin. on Monday (pray for us) and then will have to 'rely' on this person to be timely in securing the building contract and ordering the second soil test. Either we'll get a replacement to finish off this process or will be forced to be the Admin's worst nightmare to 'motivate' them to get things done as quickly as possible. As much as we don't want it to, stay tuned, things could be VERY interesting over the next few days!

We got a place!!!

With our contract signing date looming and after a couple of fairly stressful weeks scouring the Internet for apartments and units, we FINALLY found something that was big enough, didn't reek of smoke, was clean and best of all was in an ideal location. The rental market in general is pretty competitive, but in the Northern Suburbs seems to be extremely tight. Every 'open for inspection' that we attended had one of the aforementioned "issues" that were unacceptable to us and were also being visited by at least 4 or 5 interested parties. We were even 'saved' from renting what we thought was another 'ideal' unit by a good Samaritan who warned us that the lady living next door was more than one sandwich shy of a picnic, if you know what I mean. The unit was situated close to our son's school, shops and the train station and about 1k (or 3/4 of a mile for the U.S. folks following this) from our current house. She came and told us of the problems that previous tenants had with this person and that several people in other units either had restraining orders against her or had broken their leases and left due to her behavior. That was enough to deter us and now that we have found something just as ideal (if not more so), we'll be delivering her a bottle of wine! She felt she had to tell us because she saw us show up with our children and just couldn't bare it if we weren't warned. Thank goodness for kind hearted people with good intentions!

So here are a couple of shots of the new little unit that we'll be renting. It's (get this) across the street from our sons school, is 1 block from the shops, grocery market, etc. and only about a 10 minute walk to the train station and is about .80k (that would be about 1/2 a mile) from our current house. It's also a 3 bedroom (great for us as we have 2 'energetic' boys) with each room being quite large and a decent size living room. Rather than the 2 bedroom units we were considering, it's almost like moving to a smaller version of our current house which is great. Our house now is probably medium to small in size, so not too much consolidation needed. We'll only be bringing the basics and storing a lot of items, but it's only temporary and will make moving into the new, larger and fully equipped house that much more exciting! Our contract signing is on the 30th of April and we move in on the 1st of May, which makes the timing excellent. We have targeted our demolition to begin May 7th (pending us being out by then and all necessary utilities being disconnected, and will keep you posted as to how we run, but with securing this little place, we are now looking to be right on schedule (at least from our end)!

Bricks for "The Dream"

Greetings loyal followers:

During tender signing, we were able to receive a list of houses using the same bricks that we had selected at our color appointment. These houses weren't necessarily built by Henley Properties, but they are houses that have the exact same bricks that we will use for the building of our house, so we got out and saw a couple of them to ensure it was a look that we were going to be happy with, (something I recommend doing if you are building a house through a volume builder, as it's hard to get an idea from a board with a couple of bricks on it).

These are a couple of snaps of a house built with our brick choice, which confirmed for us that it was a selection we like and believe will look great on our new home. They may not be something you would personally select for your house, but as I said before, a worthwhile exercise to affirm personal taste!

We also have been closing in on a couple of apartments/units to rent, so watch this space for more exciting and thrilling updates! With a week to go before signing our Contract and demolition around the corner, we need to get out of here…..quick!

Facade Choice For Our House

We have selected the Millbank Facade for our new house. This picture is a drawing or 'artist's rendition' of what the Millbank will look like. We have seen enough Henley houses to have a very good idea of what the finished product will probably look like and we selected this facade partly due to budget and mostly due to taste and overall satisfaction. You can't tell from the picture, but the front 'portico' as it's called (the part where the front door is and the winow above the front door), will be what's known as a rendered finish or smooth cement-like finish, and the rest (around the other windows, garage, etc. will be brick.

1/2 Way Between Tender Signing & Contract Signing

We are now at the half way point between having signed our Tender and signing our actual contract. The latest with us is that we are scouring the online ad's for apartments to rent in our area, hopefully fairly close to our current home so that we can not only keep tabs on the progress, but also because we are in an area that is close to our son's school, shops, train station, etc. So far we visited one place, but it only had a shower & no bath, so that was enough for us to rule it out. We are visiting at least two more properties this weekend and hopefully will be able to secure something in the next week or so.

We should receive our contract and final drawings specific to our house and lot late next week or early the following week. We will be going back to the Henley offices to sign the contract on Monday the 30th of April and hope to be into an apartment or unit right then or shortly after.

I phoned our Demolition guy today to see if our permit for demolition had been received yet and it has not. He said it could be a couple of weeks away as they take a while, so hopefully it won't be more than that and we are crossing our fingers we get it prior to the date we sign the contract. That way we can bring it with us to the signing and they will be able to secure the building permit fairly quickly as all work on our part will have been done. Demo guy said that he'll fax it over to me as soon as he has it.

Watch this space for continued updates on demo permits, disconnection of services (soon to be organized) and apartment/unit hunting!

Riviera Double Storey Floorplan

Tender Signing!

We are really on our way now! We had a 4 hour sit down with our Tender Presenter, who took us through all of the costs (Site Costs, Connection Costs, our Color Selection Costs and Variation Costs) and we now have an idea of what the complete project will not only look like, but how much we'll be owing the bank! Below is the breakdown of our site costs, without going into the color selections and variation costs...

New connection to stormwater drains: $1,268 (Our connection is either old or in poor condition and the new house and works will need sufficient drainage to the stormwater. This cost is high because of additional considerations, such as; breaking open the footpath, disturbance of the nature strip & reinstatement, additional council road opening permit fee & supply of crushed rock to protect drains & ensure public safety).

Additional single phase underground power connection: $72 (Up to 12 meters is included and based on our lot, the sitting of the new house an the positon of the power, they have estimated a couple extra meters being needed to reach the meter box).

Temporary fencing for duration of works: $332

Additional drainer allowance for sewer point trenches between 1500mm & 3100mm in depth as required by OH&S: $645

Concrete slab type "M" to suit foundation material class "P" as per Soil Report: Included (Note, 'M' Class slab to be confirmed on Engineer's slab design. We are obviously hoping/praying it remains an 'M' slab after demolition. We have been told it's highly likely it will).

Total cost of Earthworks for building platform: $1,322

Agricultural drains to base of cut greater than 300mm deep: $390

Riser pipe to front of garage: $35 (This is for necessary drainage)

Silt pit to be connected from agricultural drains to stormwater: $103

Timber sleeper walls retaining walls as required by council and per site plan: $2,654 (They admittedly charge an extensive amount for retaining walls. Our tender presenter kindly hinted that the flatter the land is at the time they are ready to do 2nd soil test and start work, the more likely it would be that we could avoid retaining wall costs, so we are going to try to level it as best as possible before they begin).

Brick retaining wall (opposite side of house), waterproofing & agricultural drains as required by council: $1,557

Garage located 1.0 meters away from inspection shaft to sewer line, cost for surveyor to site inspection shaft etc: $130

Reticulated termite treatment system: $825

Rock removal provisional allowance - services & foundations (charged @ $192 per cubic meter): $3,840 (This is provisional, as stated and will be refunded if they do not dig up any rock. We should be OK here because the initial soil test did not hit any rock and given some recen works in the area, we know neighbors etc. have not hit rock. If they do hit rock, they have to show us the rock they have discovered as well as a report detailing the size, amount, etc).

25% builders margin on provisional allowance for rock removal: $960 (Henley charges 25% on top of the removal charge and they are up front about it, also provisional, so again if we don't hit rock and we are not charged, this cost naturally drops away as well).

Material handling charge due to limited site access: $688 (This is a charge we and our tender presenter find a bit rediculous. Despite paying a $7,500 zone charge for Henley to build in our area, there is an additional charge for having to hand carry materials from the front to the back. They are trying to get this removed for us).

Re-establishment Survey: $905

Asset protection fee: $115

Second soil test, post demolition: $350

Guardrail to single storey section of house due to OH&S: $286 (We may get some of this back as well if they don't need to use a guardrail on one part of our house. They need to have 6 meters of clear ground below in order to forfeit the need for the guardrail).

Stormwater pollution prevention required to comply with council: $1,028 (These are a number of little provisions built into this cost so that we have a 'clean' site as required by most council's. Apparently ours aren't too bad as some can be rediculously strict).

So there you have our costs for Connections, Foundations & Footings. All of that should come to $16,680 if I have added it up correctly, which is much higher than we had originally anticipated. HOWEVER, if you take into the account that we hopefully should be reimbursed for the rock provision, can get our land level enough prior to start so as not to warrant the need for retaining walls (one or both), as well as the silly material handling cost, the total will then be $6,981! That would be about what we were told originally, so we'll keep you posted as we move closer to 2nd soil test and the construction moves through. Once we are done, we'll know what we ended up being in for!