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

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: Antenna saga FINALLY ended

Got a txt yesterday from the antenna people - called them back this morning, and by the afternoon someone had come around to finally connect our antenna.

So this is how it goes - when you build a house, you don't get an antenna. Your choice is to

1. Add the antenna into your contract - let's say it's $400. This is maybe double what it would cost you to do after handover, but you should be able to move right in, plug in your TV and start watching whatever you want to watch.
2. Organise the antenna to be installed after handover. Might cost you $200. Much less than the builder, but you have to make a few phonecalls.

Anyway, I thought we'd bite the bullet and pay the builder to install it for us... and get the benefit of having it ready to go as soon as we had the keys. Instead, we ended up getting it finally connected nearly five months after we had handover, despite me constantly reminding, calling, emailing Metricon to get it fixed - and it only took a 10 minute visit from the antenna technician.

Anyway, moral of this story is for anyone building a house, whatever you can get done yourself, do it yourself. Things like higher ceilings, floorplan changes, door locations etc you can't really change yourself after handover without spending huge amounts of cash so you'll have to get it drawn into contract.

Here are some things you may consider doing yourself once the house is yours.

• TV Antenna (See above rant). But not extra TV points, easier & cheaper to do it through the builder.
• Driveway, outside decking, rendering, stackstone, exterior tiling etc. You could pay $5000 to render your facade through whatever builder, or pay a tradesman $2000 for the same thing, avoiding the builder's markup.
  
• Light fittings. You will get standard builder's light fittings in most rooms, which are the cheapest, nastiest things you can get - bare lightbulbs and a plastic hat. But you can choose exactly what light fittings you want, and get an electrician to wire them in later. Note that downlights are a tricky issue -you should put in downlights downstairs (in a 2 storey house) through the builder as it can be impossible or very difficult to add them in after plaster is up (floor trusses can block transformers etc).
• Flooring (carpet, timber etc). You'd probably find better quality and range available cheaper if done yourself after handover. We used Fowles Clayton for our carpet and they did a great job.
  
• Window coverings. Same as above. Except don't call Spotlight - they were meant to show up today to measure our remaining windows for custom blinds, and never showed up. Shitty customer service (by not keeping basic promises) is the easiest way to lose not 1, but 1000 customers. Ever been to a Spotlight store and watched 1 person try to serve 500 frustrated customers?
  
• Feature walls - if you're handy with a paintbrush, cheap to DIY.

So, things that are integral to the house that you want, or if you're too busy to organise things yourself, get it through the builder. Everything else, organise it yourself if you want better range and price.

So, now only a couple of remaining items for our 90 day inspection - bowed cavity frame in ensuite, and plaster repair and paint in garage.

Ultimately, I'm happy I finally got my antenna connected, but since I paid the builder's premium to get it done during the house construction, it should've been ready at handover 5 months ago, not now. Or at least fixed within a few days of moving in - it's not like it was an expensive thing to organise, and it really soured our new house experience. You don't need a postgraduate degree in marketing to figure out what I'm trying to get across here - but if you do, my consulting services are available!

T&T

Handover cheques and house insurance

Luckily I had a day off work today, as I spent most of the day on the fax & phone. Most of that time was spent on hold, waiting for Heritage to sort out their issues - anyway, the good news is, at 4:50pm I was finally able to log on to our account correctly and get the right amount drawn out to my other bank account for a bank cheque to be prepared! Still a bit peeved that things weren't working last night, but because this final payment is a little tricky to organise maybe that's why things weren't going smoothly.

Also called AAMI to organise insurance on the new house. Interestingly enough, the original insurance we paid was based on a 50 year old weatherboard/asbestos cottage that was lucky to be 10 squares.

And with our new 43 square brick veneer 2 storey house, the annual insurance premium increases massively... by $41. I guess not many houses burn down nowadays, so the risk of the insurer actually having to pay to rebuild our house is almost zero. Also added on contents insurance; haven't calculated what the actual content value will be, so will recalculate and re-insure contents at the end of the year.

Been planning to get our superduper home alarm with video surveillance/recording, mobile notification and internet remote monitoring installed once we've settled in. Sorry - not giving away any more details on this for obvious reasons! But if someone drops a coin on the footpath in front of our house in the middle of the night, we'll be able to tell if it's heads or tails!

Stopped by the house today, and noticed the overflow has been drilled into the rainhead. It was suggested to hide it around the side of the rainhead so it wouldn't be visible from the street or side of house, which was a good idea.,


Getting superexcited about handover now, not long to go! I even bought a shower caddy thing today - the plan is, Tina gets exclusive use of the ensuite shower (and niche!) while I use the bathroom shower; at least for the first 3 months, so we can see if there's any leaks or problems that need to be fixed at the end of the 3 month maintenance period.

Stair guy called me today to confirmed he's booked in our job for after handover - it's 3 solid days of work, with the first day being 7am to 5pm for preparation, taping, sanding and hopefully the first coat of stain. Given the amount of hours of work involved, his quote actually seems quite reasonable now - so we're just hoping the final result will be good! Will also need to buy some small pots of our wall colour - Dulux Natural White - so we can touch up, or repaint walls where the stain will run. Or maybe change the walls adjacent to the stairs to a feature colour, depending on how much repainting is required.

T&T

Stairs: Organising sanding & staining

So we upgraded our stairs to cantilevered hardwood stairs and stainless steel balusters; but they come in a raw finish. We want them stained charcoal to match our front and rear doors - in fact, we want things to look pretty much like this picture below;


...with nice dark wood floors through all of downstairs, and dark stained stairs & handrail. Got in touch with a guy recommended to us from our earlier SS, and hopefully he'll get back to us with a quote. Ideally we want the stairs sanded and stained pretty quickly after handover, and before the carpets go in. Hopefully won't take too long - stairs will need sanding first, then a few coats of stain with drying time in-between each coat. Maybe a day's work?

Also the picture above is from the Nolan on display in Point Cook, which apparently has just been sold. Don't know if it's still open as a display home; we only visited it once. Just looking at the picture above, it's got huge entry (external) doors placed to the sitting room on the right - expensive! The bulkhead in the entry hallway is about $1000 option.

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 98: Scaffolding erected, auction results from the weekend.

Yesterday someone came to clean out the rubbish cage, but today I turned up around noon just in time to catch the crew who had put up the scaffolding this morning; apparently it took them about 3 hours.

Makes it a bit harder to get into the house now! Not sure if much else will be done this week, we'll see how it goes. Also went by Balwyn to pick up the keys for a 3 month housesit there, we'll move in this Good Friday.

We also had a busy weekend, following a bunch of auctions in our area that were of interest! One of Melbourne's busiest auction weekends ever with over 1000 auctions. First one was the Metricon Liberty in Mont Albert North, on Whitehorse Rd.


Not a big turnout, maybe 20 people and passed in at $1.6m, but later had a sold sign up, final price undisclosed, but probably between $1.6 to $1.7m.


Next was a neighbour's house about 7 houses up the street. This is a 40sq AV Jennings house on a big block of land built about 3 years ago. Had a nice modern floorplan, with a great double storey void over the formal rooms and massive 2nd/3rd bedrooms. We love the facade on this house, was one of the things that attracted us to this street, and also played a part in us choosing the Chateau design with weatherboard cladding on the first floor, like this house. Sold after auction for over $1.25m.

Finally, this tired old weatherboard on 750m a few streets away from us, on a busier road, facing east/west. Sold for $890,500! We'll probably see 2 - 3 townhouses there by the end of next year. Pretty glad we bought our redevelopment house when we did - if we bought it today, we'd be paying another $150-200k for it!

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 63: Outdoor room beams, and almost ready for roof!

Another great Tuesday, because I don't have to work on Tuesday! Went by the site after lunch, and there was a guy with a whopping great truck and a mini excavator doing a site clean - he flattened out more of the rear & side of the site, looks much neater now! Met one of our neighbours across the road who wanted some of the rubbish timber to use for shelving - better to reuse than to throw it out, that's for sure, so he managed to cart away some of the discarded timber. He was of the opinion we were pretty lucky in buying the old house when we did, because now prices in our immediate area have rocketed up another $80-100k in the last 9 months - and going from local prices, he's not too far off the truth!

Having a look around the frame, looks like the chippies did a bit this morning, including fixing up those dodgy loose noggins upstairs that I pictured yesterday, installed a missing truss over the family room window, installed a board over sitting room window, plus this:


Outdoor room now has the beams installed and timber pole that will be enclosed with brick. Near one of the beams though, a stud has splintered quite badly, will request that to be replaced. Haven't heard back from our SS since our first site meeting 2 weeks ago, but he should be in contact soon regarding the frame inspection. We have his mobile number, but haven't encountered anything serious yet that needs urgent attention.

Also this needs some kind of fix...


At the meter box, the bit of wood was cutout to allow for the power to come up through the slab. But now this means a stud to the left of the meter box has no support, so it'll need something done there, shouldn't be difficult.



Upstairs, there's a lot more temporary cross bracing installed, probably in anticipation of roof trusses coming... any day now? This is a view from the master bedroom, looking at the ensuite directly in front, and the WIR alcove to the right. Where you can see a gap in the floorboards is the stepdown to the ensuite shower flush tiled base. There's also a lot of long bolts installed through the first floor frame, connecting it to/through trusses and to the ground floor frame.

*edit* Apparently we have a new CSC and site supervisor, according to MyMetricon. Erm.. that would make it the fourth CSC in 3 months, and the second SS in 3 months? We've yet to hear from either of them, but hopefully the fast progress will continue.

sarahv: hmmm... we want timber floors to all the ground floor - but now we have to consider whether there will be a big step between the timber floors, and the tiled laundry & powder room! Tina wants a very dark, almost black timber floor colour and apparently you can't get that in a natural hardwood, so we may have to look at laminate - or even bamboo, if that comes in the right colour! Our facade isn't as fancy as yours; only render is on the balcony, and just cladding to the first floor to install, so if we can get to lockup within 4-6 weeks of frame, we'll be very happy!

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

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!!

Facades, and prewiring a new house

No work on the site today - we got a call from our old CSC Mendo yesterday saying the work won't recommence until end of next week at earliest, but hoping to have a slab down by end of January.

We've managed to spy a few Metricon designs in the inner suburbs while driving around, but of course you're much more likely to see builder's homes in the estates. While we were at Keysborough, spotted two double storey Metricon houses with the Manor facade. So... let's talk facades and street appeal for a moment!


This one has a kind of red/orange brick, perhaps something like Austral Cotham? Note that with Manor/Traditional style facades, you typically don't get much (or anything) in the way of eaves - mainly because these style of houses are better without eaves. For example, Georgian style houses look the best with flat roofs or very low pitch setback rooflines.

Also note the facade window treatments for this facade, square-ish mouldings in a contrasting colour to the brickwork. Columns to the portico - well, it's a matter of taste whether you like them or not - I think they suit the facade quite well. The minimal balcony is probably sufficient - we've got a much larger balcony at the front of the house that I doubt we'll ever use - I mean, I don't really want to be lounging out there in full view of every passerby!

I like the mailbox - some kind of stone treatment; though it looks a bit modern compared to the house.

We elected to have 600mm eaves for our Chateau facade, as it looks much better with eaves, and also provides better shading in summer. Of course, any options will cost you, and the big eaves were around $3000.

Another Manor facade, looks like the same kind of floorplan going by the facade windows. Take a look at this mailbox too - not as modern as the other one, blends in much better with the house I think. Now this house is sited on a corner block - some people like corner blocks, others don't. Personally, I'm not keen on corners, because the side of the house is too exposed - people walking/driving by can see into the house, unless you keep the blinds/curtains closed all the time, which is a bit of a pity. However, if there's a good view to be had from this side of the house, maybe a tradeoff worth making. From an investment perspective - undeveloped corner blocks are good potential targets for subdivision and redevelopment to dual occupancy.

As with most builders, Metricon offer a variety of facades. Cheapest ones are usually Traditional and/or Manor, with the most expensive being the Vogue/Contemporary (and I'm not sure whether the facade options include render or not - make sure to make your own enquiries about that!). Also, be aware that different facades will also change the size of your house! Our Nolan 41 is 41 squares (inc garage) with the traditional facade, but once we changed to the Chateau facade, it becomes around 43sq because the master bedroom has an extended retreat area and wider balcony. I guess this goes some way to justifying the increased price of the facade (something like $8-10k more than standard?)

In addition, our facade has a feature cladding to the first floor master bedroom (instead of brickwork). We love the look of this, but be aware that it will require more maintenance than brick - something like repainting every 10 years or so, which isn't a big deal to us. Also, we've heard reports that the cladding doesn't insulate quite as well as brick (no real surprise there) so potentially cooler in winter, warmer in summer. Of course, this area will still have R2 wall insulation all around.

And finally, this will (probably) be the last post for about 10 days as we're off to NZ tomorrow morning, to try and take a little holiday before the building starts. sarahV: hope they finish your house soon, and Renee&Tom, good luck with your selections! Go in with an open mind and open chequebook :)

T&T

xmas roundup - hope everyone's xmas day was great!

First of all, thanks to everyone who left comments on the previous site start post - it's grea to get feedback every now and then! Sarah V - your Newhaven looks brilliant! Somehow it looks like it's 2.5 storeys high? Renee: your block of land has a fantastic view; love it! Sirona; keep up the massive photofest on your blog, I'm checking it every time it's updated - will leave you a comment about your meter box soon too. And Anonymous - keep checking this blog, will try to keep it as updated and informative as possible.

Basically, there won't be much stuff going on for anyone's build for 2-3 weeks, so I'll go through a whole bunch of photos and random things of interest relevant/irrelevant to house building and post them on this blog. If anyone has any questions of items they want to know more about, now is an ideal time to submit them as we'll have some free time to blog about it!

So, yesterday (xmas) was the usual massive foodfest - huge lunch with my family, and huge dinner with Tina's family. We had lunch at my uncle's place - he's a custom builder, and I wanted him to build our house. Unfortuantely he only operates at the very expensive end of house building - it would have been at least double Metricon's price for one of his houses! Anyway, this particular house he's living in now was built for a diplomat who pulled out at a very late stage, so he's moved in himself. It's a fully rendered neoclassical masterpiece in the prestigious heart of Camberwell, formal sitting/dining/(ballroom?) 4 car underground garage (with some kind of stone treatment on the garage floor costing $50,000!) with butlers/maid quarters, 65+sq of living, fully tiled Travertine marble wet areas, 10' ceilings, Emporite doors, all the bells and whistles you could imagine, and my favourite room - a state of the art home theatre, which fully fitted out costs about as much as our house base price! Only took a couple of pics. This house is for private sale by expressions of interest around $5m.


Living room; parquetry floors, gas fire, Clipsal C-bus, built in audio, timber bifolds, 15' raised ceiling with feature windows.


Outdoor area. Home theatre room in a separate wing to the right of photo.

Today, Ill drop Tina off at Doncaster Shoppo for a spot of post-xmas purchasing insanity, while I'll go to our land - I gave our neighbour our bins to use while we're building, but I think he's left one out for too long, and we'll get fined if the council spots it - so it needs to be moved.

Not much planned for the coming week: beach if the weather is good, upgrade my laptop to Windows 7 if the weather's not good, go see Avatar 3D in melb Imax sometime, and research home theatre things. I've ordered a bunch of parts from the USA for the home theatre wiring etc, but they've been stuffing me around a little so will have to make sure that it all arrived by end of January.

T&T

Christmas shutdown, Nolan sold in Box Hill North result

Well, the Metricon office is shut for a few weeks over xmas - we were hoping to get a call before the shutdown to tell us of a site start date, but no such luck. Nevermind, it'll all happen when it happens. I think the worst part about building is the anxiety and feeling that someone should be working on your house at all times - gotta learn to relax, but it's not easy!

Anyway, I was meant to work on Saturday but took the day off so I could go see the auction of the Metricon Nolan in Lawford St at 11am. Quite a good crowd, maybe 100 people or so? As Deb pointed out on a comment on the prior blog entry, this particular Nolan had a modified open rumpus room - I think this was done because the normal sitting room was converted to a guest bedroom. And the while porcelain floor tiles looked great - very upmarket and modern, but would get pretty filthy once a family starts living in the house! But certainly a good look for a house for sale.

The auction started off with a vendor bid at 1.1m (quoted range was 1.1 to 1.2m). 3 bidders took the house to the reserve price of $1.25m, with a new bidder entering in and fighting to win the house at $1.43m. Nice result for the sellers! I did take a few photos on my iphone, but a dodgy USB cable is stopping me transfering pictures to the blog. Makes me wonder whether we should get a valuation on our Nolan once it's complete, but after spending so much time just planning this build, I think we'll keep this house for a good many years before moving on! Had enough of moving house over the last few years!

And funnily enough, I met up with a reader of our blog after the auction, who was standing next to me, who are building the Nolan in Doreen (sorry, I totally can't remember your name right now!) Nice to meet you!

Our current housesit in Preston is going well - the dog was a bit anxious around us at first, but now she's quite friendly. The cat - well, cats just need to be fed, right? And so far, it doesn't appear as any plants have died - yet. We may have lined up another housesit in Rosanna for next week after this one finishes, looking after cats & rats - we'll see how that little party turns out! Anyone else needing a housesitter in Melbourne, contact us!

And since I couldn't attach any photos of the Nolan, here's a picture of something a little different; my car is for sale, to help fund the house build of course!


It's a beauty - a 1997 Nissan Skyline R33 GTR Vspec series 3. It's a fairly rare enthusiasts' car, and if you're after a true Japanese supercar (or know someone who might) please leave your contact details as a comment!

T&T

Site start? Erm... not just yet

Went by the site yesterday to clean up a pile of dirt on the nature strip that Metricon told me must be gone prior to site start - even though United Energy are meant to come back soon for a review and cleanup, I figured I'd break out a shovel and clean it up myself. Also stuck in a few star pickets and rope just to cordon off the front, and stuck up a sign with our lot number and details for the construction crew.



Also received a letter from our CSC saying the contract was now (finally) unconditional as of December 3rd! But of course, I then received a phone call on Friday 4th, saying that because of one little issue, construction still can't start!

Turns out that our neighbour has a phone line running from the phone pole in front of our site, and because it runs across our block it's an OH&S issue. Meh! Anyway, contacted Telstra straight away and hopefully it'l be fixed... but probably not in time to get a pre Xmas site start. Oh well - it will allow the soil to settle a few more weeks before slab goes down, anyway. With any luck, we might be told of a site start date before xmas, but no site start before xmas.

One thing we're grateful for are great neighbours that we've met - spoke to our next door neighbour today about the phone line thing, to get consent for a contractor to go into her front yard sometime, and she was quite happy to allow that - thanks heaps Tina & Craig!

Also went today for the open inspection of the Nolan that is going for auction in a few weeks (see prior blog post). Also took my parents to check it out. And to "anonymous" who was thinking this house for sale is a Liberty - nope, definitely a Nolan (real estate agent confirms it).

The main thing was that it was nice to see a Nolan without all the display home upgrades - usually the display home Nolan has an ensuite to every bedroom, but we were able to see the original 3-way upstairs bathroom for a change - and it works really well! In our opinion, not worth the extra $20,000 to put an ensuite in every bedroom.

Main notes about this house:

• Sitting room converted to guest bedroom
• Study has double cavity doors (as we have optioned on our Nolan too) but with cutout niche in the front wall; a little odd.
• Rumpus room and dining/outdoor rooms swapped in position, done in this particular Nolan to take advantage of the NW orientation.
• Beautiful floor tiles on ground floor - but white grout would get kind of dirty once a family gets in there to live!
• Upstairs had plain vinyl sliding doors, upgraded to taller size. I still think mirrored robe doors look better.
• Kitchen had upgraded vinyl wrap doors - very nice! Plus upgraded handles, same as what we have selected for cupboards.
• Laundry entrance was kept standard, off the kitchen, with lots of extra storage.
• Semi-recessed basins all around with ceasarstone drop edge benchtops.
• Austral Hawthorn bricks, with off white rolled mortar - our brick selection, but we chose flush mortar. Looks beautiful in real life up close, so glad we upgraded to this brick!
  

Didn't take any photos inside, but scanned in the floorplan from the brochure - enjoy!


Also had a comment by "anonymous" asking about our floorplan modifications - if you search through this blog, you should be able to find our modified floorplan layout.

However, we did some thinking, and looking through our Metricon catalogues and books, it seems that you won't get offered floorplan modifications if you go straight to contract, and perhaps also if you choose a house & land package.

Why not - that's my main question? I mean, it's not like the house is already built and they have to knock down walls or anything. I guess it's to minimise paperwork and administration and time spent in drafting.

My advice to anonymous: If you want changes to your floorplan, take it up with your sales consultant, if you don't get anywhere with them, ask to speak to another sales consultant - don't forget, they get paid based on sales made! But then again, check again to see whether you must/need floorplan modifications. If you want extensive changes, maybe you should select another builder or floorplan that suits you better. Our main reason for choosing the Nolan was that it needed very little changes (and honestly, we could build the house as standard and be very happy with it). We also looked at Henley & PD, but some of their floorplans just didn't work for us, or ones we liked couldn't fit our narrow building area, or had poor orientation for our block. Liked the double storey Carlisle designs a lot (good standard inclusions too), but they flat out refuse to build in our area - oh well, one sale lost for them!

Our main "nonstandard" floorplan changes were:

• Modified laundry - entrance swapped to be near powder room
• Modified powder room - WC and basin in one enclosed room
• Modified ensuite - shower and WC swapped position
• Extra doors: To study, rumpus, ensuite, hallway.
  

Really, not major changes, all able to be done with internal wall changes only, no structural changes. Good luck anonymous!

T&T

Aaaand.... we have a clean site!

So, the weather was awfully hot this morning (got to 38 by lunchtime I've been told!) but despite that, while I was at work, so were the demolition crew. By the time I got to the site after work, everything had been allllllllllllll doooooooooone!


Doesn't look like much land after the demolition, just enough for one big boy's toy in the centre! Many times I wish we had a wider frontage, and NO side easement, but at least those troubles have been sorted out. It's not easy finding a 100% perfect site for redevelopment in existing suburbs, so we've done reasonably well. Fairly flat - but still about 80cm of fall from front to back, and a tiny bit left to right. If you look beyond the crossover, the soil still looks a bit white where the concrete/gravel driveway used to be. I'll have to go back tomorrow when it's not soggy and wet (hopefully) to have a poke about to make sure all the concrete is gone, though I'm sure the demo guys were quite thorough.


Yep, definitely going to have to move that crane, it's sitting about where our entry hallway or sitting room will be!

Just got a comment from a reader who is building a Nolan in Bundoora (Hi Renee!) asking about additions to base prices. Basically all M display homes will have a minimum of 100k in upgrades and options over the base price. Don't forget the base price is for Traditional facade (which may or may not appeal to you), but typically the more fancy (eg bigger balconies, cladding etc) and the more "modern" looking, the more expensive the facade will be (up to$15k on top of base). And of course, don't forget render isn't included in a facade by default!

Add in other upgrade prices such as structural items, colour/fitting upgrades, electrical upgrades... well, if you add $100k to the base price, this should cover most things like site costs, facades, upgrades etc (but even then it may not be enough for floor coverings, window furnishings, driveways/crossovers etc!) See the earlier post on "Beginner's guide to building with M" for some indications on upgrade costs.

And As for our own temporary housing situation while the house is being built, we've got a housesitting gig for middle December, and also for end of January. If anyone in Melbourne needs professional, mature and responsible housesitting (we love pets!) for any duration, then please let us know!

T&T

Neighbours house that was for sale - sold?

So while browsing the "for sale" pages on Domain, came across the fact our neighbour's house was for sale! It's a few doors down, and was only built a year ago.


Beautiful looking house, one of the nicest facades on our street I think! It blends in with the established nature of the other houses on the street, but stands out for design. Nice features included double glazed casement windows all around (expensive!) and refrigerated AC. We went in for a stickybeak one day - furnishing were a little dated, but the inside was nice enough. Not real keen on the "formal living/dining" room, the study was tiny, and the master bedroom also very small. Very nice rear deck/verandah and bifolds though, much larger than our one will be I think. As for overall size, it's probably marginally smaller than our Nolan, but still very livable. Love the zero maintenance front yard too, I imagine we'll take some design cues when we get around to doing ours!Their block of land is a little larger than ours, but of course also north facing. Pity we can't find out how much it sold for, as it was a very low key sale and private bids only. But if they get the 1.3m they were asking, it'd definitely be the most expensive house in the suburb!

There's also a bran new Porter Davis house almost complete being built down the street from us - I think it's a Brookvale, but many of their houses share similar facades, so very hard to tell for sure. Not sure if it's being built to live in, or as an investment for sale, but it's had a lot of money invested in it with a fully rendered facade and feature tiling on balcony, and being fully landscaped at the front too. Next time we walk by I'll take some photos and post them here!

T&T

Electrical appointment done! And more easement problems!

Spent a couple of hours at M headquarters yesterday going through our electrical plan - we had it pretty much all laid out beforehand though, which is highly recommended if you don't want to spend days buried in floorplans at the appointment!

Of course, some things change at the appointment; I wanted a facade light on the garage, but there's a downpipe right where the light would go, not a big deal. I wanted M to quote on conduit in the home theatre room to run my own cables, but they don't offer that. I pulled out of the projector provision ($313) and just got a junction box to the roof space (to power my projector and screen) linked to a switch on the wall ($56). I'm planning to change over to Saturn dimmer LED switches in the rumpus - oooo, that's a nice light switch!

Anyway, some other results of the electrical appointment;

• 4 star gas heating with one zone, $1200 upgrade
• Antenna $360
• 20 downlights
• 4 dimmers ($82ea)
  
• 3 steplights on stairs
• 3 external junction boxes for future floodlights ($56 ea)
  
• Upgraded all light switches, powerpoints, data, TV points to Clipsal Slimline - a very modern looking design! ($13 ea)
  
• 3 external double powerpoints ($102 ea)
  
• 2 fluoro lights to garage
• 26 more double power points
  
• 9 Cat6 data cable runs ($146ea!)
  
• 7 TV points with amplifier
• Provision for futre evaporative cooling

All up, about $10,000.... how easy is it to spend money building a house! We sent through a revised plan just maing a few minor changes, and hopefully will sign off on the changes this afternoon.

And just when things were going well - we received approval from both council and Yarra Valley Water to build eaves over the easement - M now want us to prove there's no pipes in the easement, or we're going to pay bigtime for a huge slab upgrade. Got plans of YVW and council (stormwater) pipes and emailed them to our CSC, so hopefully that gets us in the clear!

T&T