Latest Developments and Approval

Pre-Approval for our finance has finally been made! No more worrying about possible loss of our land thankfully. We have also attended a tender appointment in which we basically signed off on everything in our house! Hopefully the recent floods in the South Eastern Suburbs have not affected our land release date too much, although considering our street has not been laid yet I think that July is looking like an uncertainty for now.


I have included the latest aerial shot of the estate, you can see that there is a fair bit of road now laid throughout the estate, the little stub at the bottom right of the paved area is the beginning of our street which looks like it hasn't been cut yet.


Key dates will now be our finance meeting in April and our Contract signing which should be completed pretty soon with Henley. The challenge for now is to try and up our deposit amount while also finishing off our stamp duty savings, quite a juggling act.

Finance, Colours and a washing machine

There has been some extremely interesting developments over the last month. Namely our Conveyencer contacting us and letting us know that our builder and developer have different required approval dates for finance, even though we bought a house and land package, go figure. All is sorted thanks to our trusty finance contact at Henley so it is time to move on to colours and extras before we wrap everything up for tender in January.

Our first trek to look at display homes was an absolute disaster! We went all the way to Craigeburn to find out that the display homes were moving, and that there was a week in between where one was not available, and that this was not written on the website... thanks Henley... regardless of our failure we pressed on and made it to Caroline Springs, what the hell is a Mercure Hotel doing in the middle of a housing estate? Anyway we saw some great setups there and ducked past Cosham on the way home, the result being we are now fairly confident of our colour choices and extras. We also scored a washing machine! One less thing we need to worry about when it comes to move in expenses, we were pretty stoked with that!

Colour appointment is next weekend, should get an idea of our total damage after that and then look towards our tender in January after a well earned break!

Early Estate Developments

I checked out nearmap.com.au today and saw some pretty exciting developments at the Selandra Rise estate. It looks like the main areas around the Selandra Rise Boulevard entrance have already been put together. There are even concrete curbs and light posts on some of the roads! Best of all this picture was actually taken a day after we made original purchase meaning more has been done since. I will need to check back regularly!

If you look closely in the bottom right of the picture you can see a red line roughly at the spot our block will be!

Parental inspection! Lighting plan room by room walkthrough

We went down to Henley in Lyndhurst and Selandra Rise today with my parents to show them the display home and the area where our house will be built, it was rather exciting to see our lot is now featured on the minature display of the estate! Mum was able to give Krystal some ideas while working through the house and we were able to work through our lighting plan room by room which was really beneficial.

Please sign on the dotted line...

Today we met with Stockland to sign off on our land and provide the name of our Conveyencer (thanks Ben, we owe you one). It was a smooth process and we recieved an additional unexpected $500 discount off our land which was pretty cool! We then checked in with Henley and drew up a basic quote including the extras that we had discussed. We locked in the 'Mien' package which was the home we had originally seen on the block, as well as a move in package which included a fencing allowance, sculpted letterbox, clothes line and driveway. In a few weeks we will need to return to sign our contracts with Henley and finalise our electrical plan, the main question being now, just how many downlights will we want to put in!


I took my first photos of the estate today, they are nothing special but will provide an interesting snapshot as out journey continues!

Ready set go!

Saturday 2nd of October was a frantic yet eerily calm day. It started with us getting up at 7:30am (much to Krystals disgust) and then getting to the Henley display village in Lyndhurst at around 8:30am. On the Thursday night 2 days prior we had dinner with some friends (Joel and Jess) who had just bought in the Selandra Rise estate to be constructed in Clyde North. Little did we know until after some enquiries on friday afternoon, new blocks in prime positions were to be released within 2 days of our conversation. 


We waited at Henley for half an hour, then fed up after being told 3 different opening times by Henley and Stockland, we set off for the Stockland land office on site. There we were able to speak to Kay who was fantastic, and put a hold on our desired block '917' for us. We signed contract with Stockland, then drove back to the Henley display village at Lyndhurst to talk with finance and sign officially with Henley. On a day that Collingwood won it's first premiership in 20 years, we were filled with mixed emotions of excitement, worry, nervousness and joy. We were finally doing it, we were about to set off on the journey of building our own house!