My husband and I had been renting since we first moved in together, long before marriage and kids. We had become very tired of constantly having to move when our landlord decided to sell up. In early 2011, our house was put on the market. Here began the constant "Open House Inspections". Having 4 children, 3 of which were under 6, this was a huge burden and one we did not want to endure for many years to come. So the decision was made to buy our first home. However, we didn't have any savings behind us, and to enable us to save enough money for a deposit would mean asking our family for assistance. Our only option was to ask the (my) mother-in-law if we could move the family in with her indefinitely. After much deliberation, she agreed (reluctantly) for us to move in with her.
At this stage, we were planning on buying an existing house. It had never crossed our minds to build. In May 2011 we moved into the mother-in-laws house. We didn't start our house search right away, as we had to get a bit of a deposit behind us first.
It wasn't until early 2012 that we got serious about finding a house. We were planning on staying around the area that we had been living as two of our 4 children attended local schools. We attended several open homes and quickly realised we would be paying a lot of money for something that wasn't exactly what we wanted and would potentially require a lot of work to get it up to the standard that we were after. It wasn't until we attended an open house in a newly built home that we discovered that the only way we could get what we wanted in a house was to build.
We spent many weekends visiting display homes and this cemented the idea of building our own home.....so the search for land begun. Ideally we would have loved to have bought land at The Ponds but it was well out of our price range. We considered buying a block of land at Glenmore Ridge but the block we looked at was directly opposite Mulgoa Reserve and would require a bushfire rating of around BAL29 and this would add up to $13,000 onto our budget so we decided against it. In the end we found a block of land at Bunya which was within our budget and on the 16th April paid a $200 holding deposit.
We had the choice of 4 builders at Bunya.
We had the choice of 4 builders at Bunya.
- Champion Homes
- Wisdom Homes
- Eden Brae Homes
- Allcastle Homes
We looked at all the houses on display and decided we liked the Esperence by Wisdom Homes. But unfortunately it wasn't going to suit the block, so the search continued. We ended up at The Ponds and found the Providence (Wisdom Homes) which was a perfect size and layout for our block. We travelled out to Gregory Hills to check out the Providence on display out there, and fell in love with it. This was a perfect home for our family so we went ahead and arranged a tender with the Sales guys at The Ponds. We paid our deposit to enable a tender to be done and had our tender appointment in May 2012.
During this time, there was no building happening at Bunya which concerned us. Registration seemed to be taking a long time on the release prior to ours which didn't leave us with much confidence. On the 7th June we were to pay our 5% deposit to Landcom. With our loan approved and a bank cheque in hand we headed over to our Conveyancer to hand over the cheque and exchange contracts. However, at the last minute, the hubby and I made snap decision to pull out. It just didn't feel right, and even though we knew we would lose the deposits already paid, we knew deep down that it was the right thing to do for our family.
Back to square one.....
