Whats gone before

Well as said for better or worst we have already taken the decision to build a home with Coral Homes and at this stage we have land plans finance sorted out and just getting ready to pull the starting trigger.

Getting to this stage has already been something of an adventure, and having not build a home before then there has been something of a steep learning curve.

Initially we started out early January going to the local estate land office and finding a likely looking LOT, its about 600 square meters and of a non regular shape but it has some situation factors that we like, and given the limited choice of lots then Jill and I decided that we would make a go of it.

At this stage we did some math and figured that we could build a reasonable home on this lot with a $450K budget.... Ill get to the cost blow out issue later

Having taken the decision to build and found a plot of land the next step was to come up with a house design, this was mostly done by touring the local show homes and finding a standard plan we liked, at a price we likes, that with some modification would fit the lot.... and this is where Coral entered the picture.

Whilst there were several options we looked at nad they were all more or less coming in at the same price the Coral Causarina 30 was the best fit, and at a $187,000 price tag with free ducted air con and free Solar electricity and Hot water, it looked the best design and deal, however Im sure that if we wanted to spend longer looking we probably could have done better

OK, lets get this price thing out the way first, $187K.... is a pretty good price, too good in fact, unfortunately whats not made clear is that this price is based upon a certain set of ideal circumstances that probably never exist, especially when your building on a planned Estate.....

...So $40K later we have a basic house design that meets the estates Covenants, engineering requirements of our lot and a drive, and we are now looking at a build price of  $227K......

....at this stage we started modifying the specs, out goes the 1.5Kw solar system and in goes a 5Kw system, made the garage larger, few mods to make the house actually fit on the plot, carpeting, tiling.... and new we are actually at $270K, many of the items priced into the quotation are there for the purpose of the finance application, and at the current time of writing we intend to vary it back out of the contract and have the work done by third parties at a considerable saving.