Is It Big Enough?

So we received this comment on the last blog post recently;

"Is Nolan 41 is big enough? what do you guys reckon? I am interested in a big home, should I go for Nolan 50?"

Kind of a hard question to answer I think. What's big enough for a married couple with no kids might be much too small for a family with 5 kids, in-laws and a lot of visitors. And in the second part of the post, you say "I am interested in a big home" - so why not just go out and build a 100 square + hotel?

Or buy one already made, like this on in Doncaster East... it's only got 5 bedrooms and an 8 car garage!


Apart from personal preference for "a big home", there are other reasons for considering alternative sized dwellings. Most population studies point towards growing number of single-occupancy dwellings, so someone looking to start an investment portfolio or develop residential property might look more towards compact, single-person dwellings with good access to public transport. For example, with a 700m block you could develop a large single house targeted at the upper end of the market, or construct 2-3 small townhouses - cheaper entry price, larger target market, easier resale, perhaps greater rental potential as well. However, if it's for your own personal family with no immediate thoughts towards resale, then build what you like - it's your mortgage after all.

Do you really need "a big home" too? A larger house will cost more to build nett than a smaller house (though interestingly enough on a per square meter basis it usually works out far cheaper). You can also factor in higher ongoing costs in terms of utilities, council rates, insurance, furnishing etc.

But ultimately, just go and buy the Monarch 58 for sale in Balwyn, a steal at just $2.85m. It's on Domain here, or Realestate here.

We covered the pros and cons of buying a display home earlier. This particular development we've visited a couple of times becuase it's quite near our place, and follows the usual inner suburban display style of white tiles, dark wood, and lots and lots of styling and building features unavailable to "normal" customers. You'd hope this display home is built to a decent standard as well; at least you don't have to deal with the occasional depressing elements of house building! With the Balwyn median price of about $1.5m, this display home offers quite reasonable value for the area with a huge block (910m in Balwyn is enormous!) and many superexpensive upgrades. The base price for a Monarch is something like $480k, but with the upgrades and landscaping I wouldn't be surprised if the build cost alone was around $1m. Not real keen on the main road location however, Belmore Rd is a nightmare to drive through in the morning and afternoon peak hours.

Finally, went and walked the dog to an auction on the next street to ours this morning - an old place on 800sqm passed in at $700k with a reserve probably north of $800k, which makes it the second one in our immediate area to pass in at auction. Who knows where the property market is going to go in the next few months?

T&T

Would you buy an actual display home?

So, while browsing around, came across a Metricon display house for sale in Point Cook.


Asking 625-650k, on 512sqm, with immediate possession available.

Let's say you wanted to buy a new car, but was told it could be a 6-12 month wait. Not uncommon - the current Golf GTi apparently has a waiting list this long! But... you could grab an "executive driven demonstrator" model immediately, with a few thousand bucks off. In my eyes, certainly a good dealm as you avoid a long wait plus manage to avoid some of the immediate huge depreciation when buying a new car. I bought a new car, once upon a time... never again!

Anyway, this case is slightly different when buying a house. Let's think about some of the aspects of buying a ex-display home vs building from scratch.

• Stamp duty will be considerable more on a completed house, compared to a vacant block of land.
• The house is built - you can inspect it, walk around it, and move into it straight after settlement.... instead of waiting for land to be titled (and we've all heard horror stories about land titling 6-12 months later than it was meant to!)
• It should come fully landscaped, with floor coverings, window coverings etc. A huge difference to when we moved in - with bare concrete floors, bare yellowtongue flooring upstairs, mud and crap everywhere and no driveway!
• If you purchase an ex-display home while it's still functioning as a display home, often the vendor will give a decent return (7-8% not uncommon) while the house is being used.
• All fittings and colours will be as displayed - if you don't like it, bad luck. Up to you to repaint or replace fittings after settlement. Display homes usually have had a lot of thought put into their interior design, and to be honest Metricon have some of the best display home interiors that we've checked out. Hopefully matches up with your own tastes.
  
• Being a display house, there would've been some amount of wear and tear of the property due to stickybeaks opening, shutting and banging around everything possible. Buyer beware!
• Usually display houses are optioned up hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the basic home - whether or not they're to your taste, and the price premium put on the sale price of the property is up to you to calculate.
• The location of display homes is typically in the higher-traffic area of the development, simply because display home builders want more passing traffic to check them out. Could be in a noisier location than other homes - assess carefully.

Anyway, if you wanted to check out this particular Fairhaven for sale, click here.


Or here's another display home for sale, but from Porter Davis on the East side of town, asking $520-550k.

T&T

Long rant ahead in favour of bigger houses!

A bit of action in the week before the Easter break - Tina got a call from Metricon about someone coming over to have a look at our cavity door (the only remaining thing to be done from 90 day inspection). I also got a call the other day from the installer of our blinds apologising for their poor quality - even though he wasn't at fault. Fault for the blinds lies in the manufacturing, so when the 2 blinds are remade, he'll come back to reinstall them and also recheck all the other blinds to make sure they're not going to fall apart. Things are looking up!

"Metricon's signature brand "Monarch" has a floor area of 456 square metres with a starting price of $477,000. Photo: Angela Wylie"

Here's an article that we stumbled across a few days ago, while going through The Age - Room to Move, but is a bigger house better?

Now the article is a decent read - of course, we tend to read everything about homes and housing, having gone through the process. However the real reading is in the 100+ comments left after the article; if you half an hour free, have a read through yourself!

* warning rant begins *

It seems pretty much all the comments have been left by people who have not had first hand experience of building their dream house - let's summarise their small-minded negativity here:

• Big houses = "McMansions", unpayable massive mortgages, huge utility bills, no backyards, too much cleaning, too many unused rooms, too far from the city, self-indulgent, consumerist... the list of whinging goes on and on.

#1: If you want to score easy points in an argument, come up with a catchy label. Obviously, McMansion sounds good as it brings in all the negative connotations with McDonalds. Other labels used to instantly denigrate opposing arguments are "Boat People" and "Cash For Clunkers", for a start.

#2: Affordability of mortgages are relative to the position of the mortgage payer. No doubt many of the comments on The Age are from those unable to fund any kind of mortgage for any sized property, so naturally there is an assumption that "bigger house = bigger mortgage" and the jealous green dragon rears its ugly, bitchy head. Any smart home owner has worked out their own personal level of mortgage affordability risk.

#3: Utility bills? Our first house was a 12 square cottage in Mitcham. We cooked in the summer, despite 2 airconditioners, and froze in the winter despite central heating and a log fire. Our utility bills were all higher in that cottage compared to our new house, which is far more comfortable in all seasons. Our new place has a 5.5 star energy rating, solar hot water, better orientation, better layout... the list goes on.

#4: No backyard: OK, this is one thing we could probably have more of. From our outdoor room to the back fence is about 7 metres. However, we tend not to spend much time in the backyard and have no want for a pool. My parents had a massive backyard in Templestowe which again was never used. Other people may have different priorities. Plus we have a beautiful huge park 2 streets away, the Eastlink bike trail is 3 streets away and a fantastic ride, and the dog loves going for long walks around the area.

#5: Cleaning? Rooms we don't currently use don't need much cleaning - we have a couple of rooms reserved for kids when they arrive, at the moment they're used for drying clothes (no need for a clothes dryer). We don't do any more cleaning than we used to.

#6: Unused rooms: We certainly use all the rooms we need to at the moment! The home theatre gets a workout frequently (and all our extended family loves it for movies, Rock Band/Guitar Hero sessions etc), our study is home to 3 computers and a mountain of paperwork, another spare bedroom is used for a home business, and everything is efficiently laid out as we have the space to do so.

#7: Too far from the city: Not an issue for us as neither of us need to go to the city. And when we do, it's a 20 minute drive on the Eastern Freeway. Plus the city sucks anyway - parking is hard to find and expensive, there's too many d!ckheads on the streets and everything we need isn't in the city anyway.

#8: Self indulgent/consumerist: Well, all people have different goals in life. Our goal was to have a comfortable, modern house for us and our future family, with a little bit of luxury to enjoy coming home to every night, and that's what we've achieved. We love cooking in our big kitchen. We love (or maybe it's me) playing video games, watching TV shows and movies in the home theatre. We love our massive bedroom and its ensuite - it's like being in a 5 star hotel every day, without the minibar and pay-per-view fees. Since we spend a lot of time at home, why not make it something you love?

Anyway, my final view is that there's a small subsection of the community out there who feel they need to mask their inferiority complex by being overly critical of other people, other people's choices and strangely enough, other people's homes. Give these people the attention and respect they deserve, which (no surprise), is zero on both counts.

*end rant *

Edit/postscript: Looks like the first article was so popular,an opinion piece was published afterwards. Let the fun continue!

Days of the humble home at an end as goliaths invade suburbia

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/days-of-the-humble-home-at-an-end-as-goliaths-invade-suburbia-20110422-1dreq.html#ixzz1KJEm2Hk3

T&T

Product/Company warning: KRESTA blinds

So now with the wedding planning and event all over, it's back to making our house a home.

We've been in over 6 months now - how time flies. We had the 3 month service review done at the start of the year, and while most things have been fixed satisfactorily, I'm still waiting... waiting.... waiting.... waiting....

...waiting... for the service manager to call me back about when we're getting our faulty cavity sliding door frame in the ensuite fixed.



To recap, before handover our independent inspector noticed this fault (door and frame touching each other, failing to meet basic Australian Standards guidelines to tolerances). The problem was "fixed" at handover, but clearly a pretty dodgy "fix" since a week after handover the door and frame was touching again. Noted at 3 month review, promised to get it fixed, nothing done yet. I will be calling in the coming week to find out what's been done.

More issues have arisen with our window coverings. We were able to grab some standard blinds from Spotlight and Bunnings to hang in some rooms, but for the home theatre and master bed we needed custom ones made due to the nonstandard window widths.

Anyway, here's a timeline of what happens - mostly for my benefit, so I can record what's going on in case we end up taking Kresta to the Small Claims Tribunal.

• late Feb 2011: Placed order with Kresta for 7 blinds: 2 translucent and 5 blockout, 50% deposit paid. Promised to be be done by mid March as a rush order.
• Mid March: No blinds.
• Tuesday March 22nd: Called Kresta to find out where our blinds are since they never contacted us after the deposit paid. Turns out we might get them installed next week. Paid remaining 50% owing on blinds.
  
• Tuesday March 29: Blinds installed.
• Thursday March 31: Noticed one blind in the home theatre room had come off the rail and was lying crumpled on the ground. Could've happened this day or day before.
• Friday April 1: Called Kresta Doncaster store to complain about blind. Polite customer service lady said the installer would pick it up the coming Tuesday.
• Tuesday April 5: Defective blind taken away by installer and quoted 10 days to remake.
• Wednesday April 6: Got home after work and saw the big blind in the master bed also fallen off the rail. Looks like it was two blinds "glued" together by a tiny strip of glue and of course glue isn't enough to hold the big blind up.

• Thursday April 7: Called Kresta Doncaster store again to complain another blind was defective. They said they'd call me back to organise another check.
• Monday April 11: Kresta called and said they couldn't check the defective blind until Saturday 16th April.
• Saturday 16th April: Kresta called and says installer is sick. Can't fit us in again until Saturday 30th April. Clearly I'm not impressed. I take the defective blind into Doncaster store and leave it with them.

So, we're in the middle of some issues with Kresta. At the moment it's too early to judge whether or not there are going to be issues with this company - it's OK to make mistake as we're all human, but it's the complaint resolution process and customer satisfaction that will make or break companies. So far, not so good. Will keep updating progress, should Kresta come good on their service claims, we will acknowledge this.

On that note, here is some tips for you new home builders to avoid some of the basic errors that we made when choosing suppliers for our house. Consumer Affairs Victoria reviewed basic contracts for several manufacturers and you are legally entitled to demand a change in the contract should they state:

• contradict or do not allow for consumers’ statutory rights in relation to implied warranties.
• limit the performance obligations of the supplier.
• require the consumer to pay in full before completion of the contract.

Should any company have any clause relating to these terms, first request they change them to comply with the directive by Consumer Affairs Victoria. Should they refuse, DON'T ORDER WITH THEM, take down as many names as you can and contact Consumer Affairs Victoria who will investigate on your behalf - and find another company who trades fair. Unscrupulous retailers will take advantage of the fact that most consumer simply don't have time to research their rights prior to signing a contract - we didn't. But now we are aware that Kresta are in prima facie breach of the Consumer Affairs directive for asking for full payment upfront, we have a strong case to push for a full refund on defective items, even outside their stated "warranty period". Also be aware Vista part of the Kresta Group (Kresta Holdings Limited)

• Google search for "company name consumer affairs complaints" - sometimes provides information on major offenders.
  
• Also, if you're an iFan, get this free app for your iDevice: My Shop Rights.
• Consider reading ProductReview and NotGoodEnough.org - however these kind of sites tend to be negatively biased - bad experiences tend to be publicised more than good ones. Still, a good way to hear of real-life experiences. Similarly Homeone is a great resource for all home builders.
  

*sigh*

Keep fighting for YOUR RIGHTS people! On a related note, I recently reported Micro$oft for selling defective game consoles. While on that particular issue Consumer Affairs decided it wasn't a big enough fish to fry, I was able to claim repair costs through my credit card insurance (though it did take 5 months to be approved). Worth checking to see if your credit card provider offers this service.

T&T

90 day service: why are things getting worse, not better?

So after we had some general fixing done a week or so ago, we ran the dishwasher and found our kitchen sink drainage with added extra leakiness.

As part of the 90 day service, the trades came and tested all the sink for drainage - but it looks like something got screwed up here, because out kitchen sink wasn't leaking before, and now it is.

Of course, I've tried tightening the drainage clamps around that U-bend, but it's still leaking. Don't know what the problem is, we didn't cause it, someone's gonna have to come fix it.

Still haven't heard back from Metricon about the few remaining items that need to be completed.

1. Repair and repaint cornice and plaster in garage from where garage door was fixed
2. Straighten/replace ensuite cavity door frame
3. Fix leaking kitchen sink

*edit* Went and checked the kitchen sink top to bottom - turns out they loosened the drain plug and forgot to tighten that one. So far so good.

T&T

The money value of time

There's been a few ads for knock down & rebuild in our local paper - here's a couple that we saved because (of course) it features a Nolan!


Can you spot the difference - December 2010 on the left, and February 2011 on the right?

Anyway, the basic difference comes down to the money value of time, or as most people know it - "time is money", and this is a great example of that in real life.

Would you rather have $100 today, or $100 in 10 years? Here's a hint - take it today. Inflation alone means $100 in 10 years won't buy you as much as $100 today, ignoring any other benefit from investing or growing the original $100 over 10 years.

Same thing applies to building a house. As time goes by, labour and material costs increase, let alone other associated costs to operating a business. One largely overlooked factor in leaving your initial $1000 deposit is that although it locks in the base price for your house, it only does so providing you start building within 150 days (or however many specified days according to your builder).

To be fair, it would be unreasonable to expect your $1000 deposit to hold the price of your house for 6, 12, 18, 24 months into the future, for all the reasons mentioned beforehand. How would you like it if your boss decided to commit to paying you your exact salary for the next 5 years?

If you're building, make sure the builder isn't dragging their heels in organising appointments for precontract, contract, colour appointments, tile appointments etc. Similarly, make sure you're as organised as possible - do your homework in picking colours and selections, know exactly how and where to make modifications and upgrades if you want, demolish any old house asap if you're rebuilding, know your block of land inside out and get to know people at council if you have to regarding building permits.

A special warning for those building in new estates, land developers are notoriously optimistic in having your land titled - delays of 6-12 months and beyond in titling is not uncommon, and you're the one who will have to foot the bill for delaying the builder - you can bet the developers have a good legal team writing their contracts to make sure they're not responsible for delay costs!

Anyway, getting back to that picture of the ads, in 2 months the price has changed $11,000. This doesn't mean that every 2 months the base price will keep increasing by that amount, typically prices hold for 4-6 months before increasing again. Factor in price increases when building - base prices change, upgrade prices change, upgrade categories change and so on.

More food for thought - let's say that extra $11,000 is paid back over 25 years at 6.45%. The extra interest alone on $11,000 is about $11,165 - so now instead of paying $11,000 more, it's cost you $22,165 more.

Unlike flat screen TVs and computers, building a house doesn't get cheaper year on year, exactly the opposite!

Hmm... I should really start writing a book about building new houses - any readers out there work for a publishing firm?

T&T

90 day service: Garage door fixed

Got a call this morning - Rob from Gliderol was in the area and was hoping to fix our door today - yes please!

Our main problem with the garage door is that it never worked smoothly - lots of grinding, metal-on-metal noises, and it would always get stuck halfway and near the bottom, stopping it from closing - super annoying.

Anyway, Rob quickly diagnosed 2 problems.

1) Tension on the springs too tight - easily fixed.
2) Motor and chain mechanism mounted incorrectly - bit harder to fix.

Basically the panel glide door moves up and down when a pulley/chain mechanism pulls/pushes the door up and down. It should be mounted securely at two places, but the original installers decided to mount one end loosely around some electrical conduit pipe, instead of 2 inches to the right on solid wood - see the picture below!


So of course the door mechanism wasn't securely, it kept moving about, and also cracked a lot of plaster where it was mounted through the cornice and around the pipe. Makes you wonder whether some of these trades use any grey matter at all! Wouldn't have been any more difficult to mount the door correctly in the first place.

Now the pipe protects some electrical cable which goes to a junction box mounted above the garage door externally, where we will eventually get dual floodlights fitted. So if you have any lights centrally mounted above your garage, make sure your garage door mechanism is mounted properly, and not onto conduit!!

Anyway I called Mark and informed him the plaster needs to be repaired and repainted - also here at the other end, where the motor also had to be shifted over to keep everything in line. Just a paint touchup required.


Finally, the last bit of advice I got was that the door needs to have a bit of lubrication in 3 months with WD40. These black tension springs need to be sprayed all along.


Also these rollers on the side need to be able to slide back and forth freely, so apply WD40 to the groove in the case holding the rollers in.

Final result? Now our garage door works like it should - quickly, quietly, without getting stuck and without all the vibration along the mechanism that was there before. Good result!

Data people are meant to come this Monday, and also got a call this morning from Southern Star regarding doors, windows and lock to be fixed, which is booked for Friday 28th. No word yet from the antenna people, and will have to find out when the plasterer can come in.

So far, 90 day service item fixing seems to be organised efficiently and quickly, with a good tradesman coming today for our garage door. Let's hope the rest of the checklist can be fixed equally well!

T&T

90 day inspection

Got a call yesterday to organise a house inspection today, to follow up on our 90 day service period which we submitted before xmas last year.

We didn't have all that many items to report - mainly the garage door which sticks a lot, incorrect keys for various doors, and of course my antenna which still isn't connected. Plus other things like sticking doors and windows.

Anyway, Mark went through all the items on our list, some things are too inconsequential to fix - we have a lot of tiny cosmetic cracks along windowsills and cornices, but they're part of the house settling. If windows were falling out, or cornices dropping on our heads, then it'd be an issue!

We got a call back from a company this afternoon who will come in next week to check the fitment our of data connections - basically when you try to plug in a network cable, the jack falls into the wall cavity, so they're not secured well enough. Hopefully the other trades required will get in touch with us this week while I'm still on holidays.

I've managed to procrastinate plenty and the deck hasn't even entered design phase - but at least I managed to complete Mass Effect 2, which is definitely my game of 2010. Been getting rid of various things on eBay as part of the moving process. Trying to figure out what kind of landscaping to do in the front yard - anyone have any suggestions for garden/landscaping supplies in Melbourne? Thinking of some king of rock/stone, surrounded by mulch/chipbark and various spiky planty things - whatever looks modern, neat and requires no maintenance is top of the list!

Also put up a few blinds - so far the minor bedrooms and laundry have Holland blinds, with dual Roman blinds in the sitting room. Had a pretty decent quote on custom blockout blinds for the home theatre and dual rollers for the master bed, so if we go ahead with that I'll let you know who to call.

Finally, I needed a spare wheel for my car and ended up buying 4. Smart, right? Anyway, if anyone has an Audi A4 B8 (current shape) and wants a spare, or to replace a curbed/scratched wheel, let me know - only $60 per wheel or $120 for all three. Audi dealer price is about $400 per wheel!



T&T

Merry xmas, etc!

phew, seems like the last couple of weeks just flew by. Finished up work for the year, which means we've got a few weeks free to tidy up the house, try and start on some landscaping etc.

Anyway just before xmas we submitted our 90 day inspection report, along with a copy of the invoice the concreter gave us - and a few days ago we received a cheque from Metricon covering the replacement of one cracked footpath bay. Nice to see the builder coming good on reimbursing us for the cost of that one as promised! We haven't heard anything yet about getting the 90 day inspection items done, but the office is probably shut for a few weeks so I imagine we won't hear back until end of January. Until then, the most annoying thing is putting up with a recalcitrant garage door that opens, but rarely closes properly, grinding away and getting stuck. Still cursing the cack-handed data wiring zombies that didn't connect the antenna and gave me crappy unsecured data jacks that fall into the wall cavity.

We've also had heaps of furniture arriving from Bay Leather Republic and King Furniture - and for anyone with a bit of spare cash around, the current King Furniture post xmas sale is pretty good, for what it's worth. You gets what you pays for. I'd love to get more King furniture but Tina says I've spent enough there and we've run out of room for any more of their designs. Then again, I reckon I could just about squeeze a chaise lounge into the laundry...

On that note - we've got a sofa to give away for free if anyone wants it, it's a two seater fabric sofa with black & white stripes, couple of coffee stains, comes with a brown suede type cover. Erm... maybe good for the shed, or if you're a hard-up student, or just want a free sofa. It's free, remember! Pickup from us in Melb eastern suburbs. If you want it, put your email address in the comment section below and we'll get in touch with you.




And with xmas over, it's time to keep the credit cards burning. Erm... towels, pillows, blurays, and the impulse buy of the day was a Jura superautomatica Ena coffee machine. Just as a hint to anyone considering coffee machines, in general we've not had good experiences with Sunbeam stuff - cheaply made not to last it seems and we've been through 2 of them. Was considering a Saeco, but my boss has had trouble with 2 of them. We did a housesit with a place that had a top-end Jura that worked brilliantly, so we thought this one might be good - house ain't a home without a coffee machine! And the silver-white colour matches our kitchen perfectly!


T&T

Nolan "On Display" video

Found this while surfing through random videos of people playing with their Jack Russells on youtube - the Nolan display home (I think it was in Point Cook?) featured on "On Display". We never got to see this house in the flesh as it closed down before we even throught about building a house, so it's interesting to check out the video. Some of the pics from this house are also used on the website.

However, we've got to say - normally the metricon display homes are beautifully decorated - however this one has some truly shocking colour schemes. Anyway, watch for yourself and make up your own mind!




Also had a lovely afternoon at a neighbour's house who invited a few of the residents on the street over for a Christmas afternoon tea. Was really good to meet some of our neighbours who we've not met before, and all of them have said what a good street it is - couldn't agree more!

T&T

Inspecting display homes - what kind of quality can you expect from your house?

This afternoon took a little drive up north to Mernda to have a look at some display homes to see what kind of finish was on them.

Surprisingly, some of the display homes (I won't say which builder!) have some pretty poor detailing when you look up close - one of the houses we saw, I swear the bricking on the balcony pillars was done using all the crappy brick sides facing out! For those who haven't looked at a single brick closely, there's at least one nice "face" side which should be facing out, and at least one "crappy" side which is usually facing "inwards" and hidden by the frame. Lots of overspray in one house, where the gloss paint from the door architraves was all over the adjacent wall, and no-one seemed to have picked that up. Bad brickwork was everywhere, lots of bricks not flush with each other plus mortar blowouts. Bad tiling in wet rooms, with tiles not flush, sticking up enough to catch your feet. Plenty of doors that didn't close properly, with latches not catching and holding the door shut. Feature wall painting done badly with ragged edges. Anyway, the point is, don't think your house should be of "display home quality" because your house should be a lot better!

Anyway, some photos... one of the Metricon display homes we went into had the right solution to the little question about doors opening against each other. In this pic, the door to the bathroom opens towards the door to the shower.


To stop the door smashing into the shower door, a little stopper is put on the back of the door itself - a simple, elegant solution, and it works. If our bathroom door is left "stopperless", we can just pick up one of these stoppers somewhere and fit it ourselves easily. Actually, we'd probably go and buy a whole lot of nice designer stoppers to replace the little rubber bumpers stuck on the plaster, a lot more durable I think.

In another house, saw a super cool, almost built-in wine rack in an alcove near the kitchen.


Quite clever - each 2 bottle holder section can link into another, secured with a single metal rod running down the centre of it all. Readers - has anyone seen this kind of wine rack before and know where we can get it from? Or can suggest any other funky wine holding solution?

And finally, a couple of the Metricon display homes in Mernda have rainheads (the little box above the downpipes, used for draining flat roofs or balconies). Our inspector picked up that our rainhead coming off the balcony doesn't have an overflow, which is just a hole cut into the rainhead to allow excess water to gush out the side. Both these rainheads have overflows - though even these are probably a little undersized, as they're meant to be the same diameter as the downpipe. Anyway, a pretty easy fix for our house as it just needs a hole cut in the side of the rainhead - takes about 3 seconds using a drill and fine-toothed holesaw bit - but another thing to check off the list at PCI.


The point is, the overflow hole is there to provide an escape route in case there's sooooo much water coming through the gutter, so the water comes out the side rather than backing up and flooding the flat roof or balcony, which then would end up flooding your internal walls - a bad thing! Who would've thought a little hole would be so useful!

T&T

Metricon house for sale in Mont Albert: Modified Promenade with Plantation facade, $1.5m plus

While doing our usual nightly browse of Domain, came across another Metricon redevelopment not that far from our house. In this Eastern Suburbs area (from Balwyn North to Blackburn North) we've seen quite a few development projects using Metricon, Porter Davis and Henley, but of course we're most interested in Metricons, right?


Has the Plantation facade, rendered front (which we reckon the plantation facade must have in order to look right!). The grey shades are a good choice for a development - nothing too extreme, and the red front door really pops out visually! The tiled roof doesn't really suit this facade though, colorbond is probably a better fit. There's glass glazing on the balcony, which probably costs an absolute fortune ($15k plus for the glass alone probably isn't a bad guess!). Could be timber framed windows on the facade, but hard to tell from this photo.

The kitchen is a little monochromatic - too much white? Then again Tina reckons all-white is a safe choice to pick when you're developing for profit. Two banks of 6 pot drawers on either side of the oven is similar to what we're doing, as well as the window splashback. Nice timber floors!

Interestingly, they've added not one but two extra bedrooms to the normal floorplan - so this is a 6 bedroom house (or even 7 if you include the closed-off sitting room as a bedroom!)

Sitting on a decent 627m block in Mont Albert North, the price range given is $1.4 to $1.5 - but given the recent performance of prestige homes in the area, we reckon the vendor wouldn't take anything less than $1.65, even despite the recent backflip "decision" regarding foreign investment in property. We'll be at this Saturday's open for inspection - and we know how many readers of our blog are interested in seeing real-world Metricon houses for sale, so if you want to see it as well, click here!

T&T

Day 134: Balcony render commenced

Balcony render was started today - didn't see that coming!

However, for the eagle-eyed readers, you might want to take a close look at the bottom of the balcony pillar on the left, and you might spot where a brick was removed about 4 courses from the bottom. So the render has been started, but this brick is missing... wonder when someone will get around to fixing that? Unless, for some strange reason, we're meant to have a brick missing... I guess it won't be too hard or affect the final render for that brick to be replaced before much more rendering is done - but still, would've made sense to fix that before render even started.

Now, the main question still on our minds is - how long from lockup to completion can we expect? Still juggling a few housesitting appointments for the next few months, but we don't want to be housesitting if our house is complete! The MyMetricon website isn't much help, since it's updated pretty slowly and inaccurately - apparently, according to MyMetricon, our roof frame hasn't been started - and the bricks, roof, gutter & fascia also haven't been started. However, to my (admittedly untrained) eye, I reckon we're well past that stage!

For those of you reading who are towards the end of the build process, how long after lockup stage did it take you to get to PCI/handover?

T&T

Day 128: Bricks cleaned, and Metricon's quality inspector through house

Tina reports that the remaining ground floor bricks have been cleaned - but because it was dark by the time she got there, no photos. Hopefully better photos of clean bricks tomorrow.

Also, looks like Metricon's quality assurance inspector has been through the house, and now there's a whole lot of pink on the frame!


Apparently there quite a few noggins in bulkheads at the wrong height for fixing plaster too, and not enough noggins in some places - at least, that what those written notes indicate!


There's also a lot of notes to make the frame flush; a fairly simple fix.

Anyway, it's nice to see that things have been picked up already, we'll have our independent inspector go through next week - and actually, we're hoping he won't pick up many additional issues, as that would mean the internal quality inspection is of a high standard.

Finally, got a lockup invoice in today's mail - the biggest slice of the bill at 25% of contract price!

T&T

Day 94: Steel lintels for balcony & garage installed

Happy Friday everybody! Not much done on our house today, just the steel lintels (beams) installed.

It looks like the beams are just placed on top of the supporting structures, then held in place by mortar and the interlocking brickwork around it? I couldn't see any holes for bolts or anything else. Hopefully the brickies will be back next week to finish off the ground floor before Easter.

It was raining quite a bit when I got to the house in the late afternoon, and with the wide eaves the top floor was bone dry - yay! Unless there's some severe wind/rainy weather coming, I think our frame and flooring is safe from rain, even without the first floor bricks.

Tomorrow, got a busy day of house inspections and auctions to check out in our local area (we're keeping a very keen eye on our local property market of course), but the one that will interest everyone else building with Metricon is this Wingrove 28 that Tina found on Domain.


This one was in the same development as the Tribeca that went to auction about a month ago - we think the result for that house was approx $1.15m sold after auction. This one is quite a bit smaller at 28 squares, and since there isn't a display home with this floorplan available, it'll be interesting to see how it feels on the inside! The above picture shows the Contemporary facade fully rendered. Nice modern colours on the facade, exposed aggregate driveway.

This picture shows a kitchen island bench with a bend in it, like the Tribeca's kitchen. two big pot drawers either side of the oven and a couple of windows either side of the cooktop. The floor tiles are quite nice, but beware of a dark colour across such a large area - makes things feel smaller. Also the light grout will discolour and get dirty over time. I'm not sure of the light beech colour laminate kitchen doors though- a little bit 80s there!

Anyway, if you'd like to have a look at this Metricon Wingrove (and buy it?), click here for the link to Domain. It's open tomorrow at 11am.

However we won't be at that Wingrove tomorrow, because at the same time (11am) there's this Metricon Liberty in Mont Albert going for auction which we visited a couple of months ago, and we want to see what the action is like. Asking $1.5m to $1.7m.

T&T

Day 76: The "Once In A Lifetime" hailstorm takes vengeance!

So the plan this long weekend was to first enjoy a game of golf yesterday at Tahatuan (Rowville). Of course, I can't even fit my golf clubs and cart into my car (which I'm trying to sell) so I borrow Mum's old Mitsubishi 4WD to get to golf.

Nice hot morning, but after lunch and by the 17th hole, the sky suddenly turned black - getting out my umbrella, hailstones the size of the golf balls we had been hitting all morning started pounding down - felt like I was being shot with paintball pellets!

So within minutes, the golf course had flooded, and a blanket of hailstones started piling up. What a disaster! Plus... only found out on the Sunday that Mum's car didn't fair well, with about 100 dints from hailstones on the bonnet and roof. Sorry mum! And with hundreds of cars/houses damaged, it'll take forever to get the repairs done... at least I didn't drive my car to golf; I think the dents would make it even harder to sell!

Anyway, our house was (of course) flooded on the ground floor, seeing as we didn't really have any walls or roof to speak of. Might go in tomorrow and use a broom to push out the water if it's still there. No pics worth putting up here.

stefan: yup, we were worried the tiles would be cracked, or that the piles of tiles on the roof would fall off! From ground level all seems OK, but will have to check closer once the weather makes it safe to get up on the first floor.

The one big score for the weekend was when Tina remembered there was a new "estate" just around the corner from my parents. I remember thinking it was a bit pricey when I checked out the first release about 4 years ago, I think asking $500k+ for the the smallest 500m blocks? Anyway. when we drove past there on the weekend, about 60% of the blocks had buildings on them, most still in construction but a few completed ones, and a great variety of styles. And... at least half a dozen Metricons going up! Here's one of them.

This one has almost the same facade we're getting (ours will also have the balcony rendered). Tina's figured out this particular house is a Riva with home theatre extension at the rear. Looking at the side of the house. you can see a narrow vertical window where the stairs are, plus on the ground floor a horizontal kitchen window splashback. This house also has standard eaves, about 450mm projection at the facade, but a few metres back on the side the eaves stop altogether. There's timber windows to the facade (and also strangely enough, the rear of the house), two-tone gutter & fascia, with downpipes matched to the gutter.This house must be close to completion, as there's an aerial on the roof and hot water system installed.

There's also a pretty big slope on this bit of land, with a 1m retaining wall on the left, and the garage is setdown at least a meter from the house slab - plus you can see three steps leading up to the portico. I'd imagine site costs would be a fair bit on this particular house - but then again, there's no flat blocks at all in this estate (we saw one house with a front door about 3m off the ground - I'd imagine a massive set of stairs would have to go up to that!). The bricks are similar to the Austral Hawthorn we've chosen, but not exactly the same. The light cladding is similar to the "Surfmist" matching colour we've got on our cladding.

Some of the other builders in this estate are Porter Davis, National Builders Group, Simonds and a few others that I can't remember. Will post up with other Metricon houses from this estate in later posts, if there's no work on our house being done! Should be quite a prestigious estate when it's completed, as the cheapest blocks were $500k and the house build costs at least $350k - not many single storey houses in this estate.

The weather outlook is pretty bleak for the next few days. MyMetricon has been updated and we're meant to be wrapped this week, and have the roof tiling completed tomorrow - both things that won't happen if the storms continue. sarahv: we've also seen some houses with roofs first, and other with bricks. I think it doesn't make much difference, as long as both are completed before plaster goes in!


T&T

No work on our house today - let's dissect a Tribeca in this blog post!

No further work done on our site today, probably awaiting delivery of a few more bits & pieces.

Anyway, Tina found a Tribeca that's going for sale nearby in a few weeks time. Let's do our usual critique of the house!

(disclaimer; all the opinions expressed below are tim's (as tina prefer to stalk blogs, but not post anything) and I'm not a qualified exterior/interior decorator - though I can get pretty bitchy sometimes as you've probably worked out!)

Now this house was constructed fairly recently - looks like a Kingston facade. Note that on the M website, pretty much all their facades show render (extra cost!), whereas this Kingston facade shows face brick. Perhaps a little overwhelming with just brick everywhere - a rendered balcony would add a bit of contrast (or even stackstone?). Also note there's a wood feature entry door but also wood french doors to the balcony (but black aluminium windows elsewhere). Perhaps a bit unbalanced - consider doing ALL windows/doors to facade in wood, or a feature entry door and aluminium elsewhere (what we're doing) but maybe not a mix & match as shown here. There's also a contrasting gutter to fascia; a fairly minor detail. Doing the fascia in a lighter colour (to match the eaves) makes the gutter look a little smaller. Over the garage door is a painted beam, whereas nowadays most M double storey houses have brick infill over the garage door. In the front yard, the garden retaining walls match the driveway colour, and an abundance of plants means no lawn to mow - yay!


This open sitting room at the front of the house is a great feature to have - useful for greeting guests, and for sitting (of course) and talking. The fireplace there is around a $7k option nowadays - of course, if you don't option a fireplace here, you could always put something in its place, like a TV or display cabinet, or a painting. In this case, the fireplace and the painting are fighting for space - looks crowded in there! Nice Roman blinds are a great modern and minimal window treatment. Not real keen on the tiles and timber transition - why not just have all tiles, or all timber? And I'm not sure the light timber colour is a complementary colour to the grey floor tiles. I do like very much the grey walls in the hallway though, it's nice to see some cool neutrals on a wall rather than the usual creams/beiges, a little unusual but definitely modern. Checking the staircase, looks like stained hardwood treads - instead of a carpeted staircase, where the carpet tends to look very ratty after a short period of time from constant up/down trampling.

Finally, the master bedroom. This is actually kind of similar to our master bed layout (though for those of you who have scrutinised M designs, they tend to replicate layouts with slight variations across the whole range). The feature false wall has a couple of reading lights mounted into it (nice touch!) plus a cutout or niche for displaying things. Behind the false wall is a walk-through robe, though it looks like there's no doors at all across the robes; which of course means your mess of clothes is on display in photos like these. Trade this off with convenience of access to clothes (no doors or sliding doors to move first). The ensuite has a wide opening (trendy and modern) but we've closed ours off with double cavity doors for privacy. And again, the side walls are a light grey shade compared to the white ceiling - this look is growing on me (but we've already picked white ceiling and white walls, but at least we could always repaint later!)

Anyway, we'll be at the open for inspection this Sunday. But it's available for plenty of other inspections - want to find out when, click this link! Asking price is around $1.05m - the location is great and it's got a lap pool, but I'd like to know how much land it's sitting on before figuring out whether it's a worthwhile figure or not.

Feedback section now, replying to previous comments on earlier posts...

paul: You're right we didn't sign the prelim contract on the day it was presented to us. Mainly because it'll take your CSC at least 1-2 hours to go through it, and we knew we had heaps of changes we wanted to make. When things were almost 100% as we wanted it, then we paid the next deposit stage and moved on. You can still change things after signing & paying too.

sean: Good advice about putting things in writing and copying it around. We're not too fussed about frame issues right now as they're minor and easily fixable, but we'll get a list in writing to check at the frame inspection (plus an independent inspector at lockup). Our SS seems well organised but (like yours) a little uptight. I'm still hoping to run some speaker and projector cables through the frame on the sly, but if it doesn't work out, I've got a backup plan!

T&T

Metricon Liberty for sale; Mont Albert. Redevelopment for fun & profit!

Of particular interest to us is the building of a volume builder's house (eg Metricon, PD, Henley etc) in established suburbs. While their houses are more often seen in estates (simply because... well, that's where people tend to build more houses!) there are certainly plenty of redevelopments going on in established suburbs.

Just drive around any established suburb for half an hour and you can pretty much bank on seeing some vacant land with temp fence, or 3 townhouses going up where one house used to exist, or one huge new place being built up. For us, we chose to sell our old house, buy a crappy house on a good street, and redevelop the site with our dream house. Doing this ourselves saved literally hundreds of thousands compared to buying a new house that some else developed (for more info check the Dec 09 blog entries about the Nolan auction in Lawford St).

Of course, it's not an easy process if you've never redeveloped a property before - weve both learned a lot about the redevelopment process, that's for sure! And by doing this blog, hopefully giving some help to others who are going through the same process.

So anyway, getting back on topic, we like to see new houses by project builders go on sale, because we all get a chance to stickybeak, but also to see how other redevelop projects have gone.

We were driving down Whitehorse rd the other day, and there was a house that I always thought could be a Metricon design, as it looked very similar to some of the facades on the website. Yesterday, driving past, we saw it had a "For Sale" sign up - so of course, after a bit of investigating, we were able to find it on Domain!


A "double balcony" is an interesting look - not sure how often it'd be used on a busy road like Whitehorse Rd though! Bricks could be Austral Nougat, quite light. Nice big flat eaves complement the wide balconies too.


The kitchen displays the typical Metricon L-shaped island bench layout. Additional cupboards over the fridge recess, and banks of 2 pot drawers either side of the stand-alone 900mm cooker (be interesting to see whether it's Baumatic or something else). Looks like a cavity door to the butlers pantry too. I'm not sold on the floor tiles - the ones in Lawford St were much better (though probably much more expensive). The white stools with the backs look nice but maybe a little too high? Also note the microwave perched on the bench near the cooker; you can option a microwave recess in the island bench which hides the microwave nicely - we got it included in our promo deal, its a pretty standard inclusion now.

(And by the way, this house is a Liberty 42 floorplan)


Main bathroom. Actually, it's similar to our tile selection, except we went with a lighter grey floor tile. Get rid of tha upright cabinet taking up all the floor space and it'd look much better!


Rear; outdoor room with lots of decking. Look over the rear ground floor windows for standard infills; we upgraded to brick infills - I just don't like the look of the stuff over the windows!

Of course, there's no price provded on Domain. The important details are that it's in Mont Albert, on a huge block of about 1000m with right-of-way access to the backyard, and the house is maybe a couple of years old and (should be!) in great condition still. Though it's on busy Whitehorse Rd, opposite a bunch of fairly unattractive shops (no cafes or newsagents), I'd reckon this would go for at least $1.7m - what are your thoughts?

Anyway, I'll be at the first open for inspection next Saturday 13th and at the auction on Saturday 27th, maybe I'll see some of you there. Say "Hi" if you run into me - asian guy with glasses [yeah that narrows it down!], probably clutching a detailed set of construction plans for our Nolan. Renee & Tom I expect to run into you again! :). Details and more pictures are here on Domain

evie & ian: Welcome to our blog! What stage are you up to in construction of your house? We are planning to get an inspection done at preplaster and final handover. We got a slab invoice on Friday and I'll pay it on Monday.

Phew, what a massive blog entry, hope you guys like it! And by the way, there's a new feature under this post where you can click on a Reaction to give us some quick feedback. For example if this blog post was Helpful, click on the relevant button and we'll know to continue posts like this. Of course, if you want to leave a specific comment (which we will reply to in a following entry) click on the Comments link and type away there. The more feedback and comments we get, the more we feel our blog is useful to people!

T&T

Miscellaneous Metricon developments

There's a massive Metricon house going up on Doncaster Rd, between Greythorn Rd & Balwyn Rd - you can hardly miss it as there's a big banner advertising "Metricon Building in your Neighbourhood" across the whole block. Looks like bricking is nearly completed.

From what we can tell, they're using Austral 50mm Hawthorn to the facade and 76mm Hawthorn to the rest of the house (what we were going to do to our Nolan as well). Double plus a single garage (damn I envy a wide block!), timber windows. Not sure what house design this is, but someone with more time than me can check all the facades on the website - I think the three sets of timber doors to the first floor is probably the giveaway. I suspect this will be a Metricon display home for a while, as it's on a good exposure location.

Now, we also had a look at the other Metricon house being started near us in Blackburn the other day - this pic below shows one thing they have, that we don't have (or need) - a temporary power pole. Here's a handy hint for all you other people considering redeveloping your site - organise an underground powerpit yourself, and do it as soon as you can!



The reason you should organise your own powerpit is all about money. If you don't organise it yourself, Metricon will organise it for you (at extra cost) and you'll probably have to get a temporary powerpole anyway (for about $1000) as the powerpit takes quite a few weeks to be done. If you get the powerpit organised and installed well before site start, you'll save a few thousand dollars, which is always nice! We also elected for a three phase powerpit, even though we don't need it now, three phase is only about $100 more than two phase power. Maybe in future we'll all be using electric cars that charge quicker/better on 3 phase, or you might want a massive AC unit that requires 3 phase.


Finally, we saw this sign in front of an old house on Balwyn Rd. The picture is of the Metricon Imperial display home on Belmore road. The idea here, is that a potential purchaser buys the finished product - ie the Imperial or similar design, but only pays stamp duty on the existing house/land value. I was trying to work out in my head how it would go down - I'm thinking one standard contract of sale for house & land - let's say for $650k, with government stamp duty calculated on that amount - plus an additional seperate contract for $x, which would cover the final house. The nice thing about this deal for the developer is that you have a guaranteed buyer at the completion of the house, plus depending on how the deal is structured, financing the build is entirely covered - no interest to the bank, plus a handy profit. Redevelopment project are going on all over this area of Balwyn - the difficulty is finding suitable redevelopment sites at a financially viable price, while funding is a secondary problem (yet not as difficult as finding the site!). Anyway, we'd love to get into development, but I think we'll wait until the house is a little more completed!

Had a big night out with the boys playing poker last night, so today we'll go past our site to see if anything was done yesterday (doubtful). Checking on MyMetricon - our slab commencement date has been postponed again to Feb 3rd; most likely because of the short week due to Australia Day. I checked out the leaked result of JJJ Hottest 100, and the top song sucks!

sloke: thanks for advice re water meter; but I'm not sure why I'd even get my meter taken away? Wouldn't M be using it for the duration of the build?

caroline: the neighbours opposite us built a lovely custom house 2 years ago, as their old house burned to the ground after a kitchen fault! yep, insurance is a must!

T&T

Still in New Zealand!

Yeah, we're not back in Australia yet, but enjoying the wonderful scenery and activities in NZ. We boated around the Bay of Islands with heaps of dolphins, did some parasailing above Paihia, smelt the smelly stuff in Rotorua etc etc.

Right now in Taupo with a bit of downtime, sitting in a very slow internet place next to Lake Taupo with a view of Mt Ruapehu in the background - fantastic! Checked MyMetricon and apparently our "Base Commenced" item is due on 28.1.2010. Not sure what this means - is this the start of plumbing etc for the base, or the day of the actual base pour? I think the tradies are meant to be on site next week, so we'll find out then.

Also, for those who keep a check on the Metricon website, looks like there's a new promotion out - the "Allure" for $4950. It's a pretty good deal, as one of the inclusions is a 4 panel timber bifold worth a fortune (we got a timber bipart in our promo) and big door handle to the entry door (which cost us $450 or so). Other things which are different to our promo is a small carpet allowance, ceasarstone to laundry and all the other wet area benches, tiles bases to all showers. Basically, what I've found is that this is the third different promo package since we signed up to Metricon - there's ALWAYS a promo package available, and they seem to get a tiny bit more expensive each time (about $500 more every 6 months) but they do include some pretty good things, definitely worth more than the small price increase. You'd be mad not to get one of these promo packages if you're signing up now with M!


Of course there's a catch, you can only get this promo if you leave your deposit after 9.1.2010. I would have loved to have had this promo at the time we signed up to our house, but that's life!

We're back in Australia this Saturday night, and housesitting an almost-new mansion in
Camberwell from Sunday - ahhh, that's the life!

Renee&Tom; had a look at your blog - we (I mean - I) wanted Zinc bricks too, but they do cost $$$! If you get the brick list from Austral, there should be a few in Glen Waverly, and there was one by Hometec with zinc bricks, looks fantastic! Also the Hometec display in Lyndhurst also use Zinc to very good effect. I'm jealous... but then again, love our Hawthorn bricks!

And finally, no pictures of house, but here's a pic of me coming down to earth after jumping out of a plane at 15000ft over Lake Taupo. highly recommended!!