Finally We are on Construction List!!

Another step closer to the dream: Our project has been placed on the construction list yesterday and work will commence within 20 working days! Also looking forward to our electrical appointment next week.

Meanwhile, I have notified the landscaper who will be visiting the site when slab work is completed to understand more of the required landscaping work.

On the down side, when we received CDC approval details, we noticed some of the minor upgrades gone missing by the drafting department before it went to CDC. We were terrified whether we need to apply for approval again!! but fortunately NO. But it is very disappointing that a renowned builder like MJH would make these mistakes. If we wouldn't re-checked the plan so carefully then it would have gone missing from the final planning document that goes to the site supervisor, Anyway, they have corrected the plan within a day, and we had to sign and resend to them.

ACC has been provided to Builder!!

Wao! Our Mortage Innovation Officer Nishant is Superb. He managed to provide our builder with ACC within just two working days! Hurray!
Now McDonald Jones needs to start work within 20 days of receiving ACC (Authority toCommence Construction). Waiting for Builder to confirm when we are on construction list!

Got CDC Approval Today

Just came to know from our Client Liaison officer that we got Complying Development Certificates (CDC) approval. Next step would be to forward that to our financial lender and wait for ACC (Authority to Commence Construction) to be issued.

Activities During Last Month

We have been out of Australia for nearly a month. In between we signed two variations relating water points at the bathrooms and few other small changes approved earlier. We also had a good buffer for work related to 'soil aggressiveness' in our contract, and got some money back from MJH because soil is not that much aggressive, yey!!! But half of it went away when water board needed an inspection on our property.

Finally plans are submitted to CDC on 4-May-2016. In the meantime, our construction loan got approved. We are eagerly waiting for CDC approval so that our financial lender can issue ACC (Authority to Commence Construction) to MJH.

We had our electrical appointment set for 19-May-2016 which is tomorrow. But unfortunately we won't be able to make it due to some personal issues. We postponed it to 9-June-2016 after learning that it won't have any effect on our construction schedule.

Update on Post Contract Activities

There is not much happening since we signed the contract with MJH last week. We are signing a post contract variation for additional water points to be available both in bathroom and ensuite near commode. This fitting needs to have a 'non-return valve' which eventually requires annual inspection by Water Board Authority perhaps. Still we have decided to have it. We will be installing hand-showers to those water points after hand-over.

MJH will be sending us 'building insurance' which is required for construction loan approval as well. Upon seeing it, we are to pay a certain percentage of deposit to the builder.

Apart from that, landscaping quotation came in. It includes driveway, fencing, letterbox, clothesline everything as per landscape plan. However, this is a tentative quotation to submit to our financial lender. The landscaper needs to visit the site after slab work is completed to check if any retaining walls, sub-surface drainage would be required and to revise the quotation accordingly.

We have already submitted the building contract, flooring and landscaping quotations to the bank. They are reviewing our documents for approval on construction loan.

We were expecting the electrical appointment soon after we signed the contract, but there was no slot available this week. So, it is now set for 19-May as we are not available in between. But this should not delay anything as the builder can still submit the documents for council approval etc without an electrical plan.

We really hope construction on our plot starts before that of our neighboring plots. Otherwise, they can dump extra soil to your plot and builder will need a clean plot to start construction. Unfortunately, soil removal responsibility is on owner. We just don't want this type of event to delay our construction any further. Thinking of putting up a sign:

And here is our plot:

Flooring Choices and Landscaping Update

We are not doing flooring with the builder. So planning to do it after handover, usually takes a week or so if planned early. We visited couple of stores and shortlisted the below:

 For Alfresco and Patio we have selected a whitish brown tile that should go with our brick Urban One Pepper.

 For flooring in living areas (living, kitchen, pantry and hallway) we planned for using vinyl. Tiles will be too cold for that area where we are building. Our primary choices are:

• Vega Whisper or Vega Silver bell from Carpet Court
• Van Gogh or Genero from Choices Flooring

Choices Flooring Selection of Carpet, Vinyl and Tiles

For carpet in all bedrooms and home theater, selection from carpet court are below:

For landscaping, we are interested in:

Major Items:

• Driveway in Natural concrete color 
• Three-side Timber lapped Fencing along with one gate as mentioned in landscape design
• Landscaping as per design
• Hedging,
• Garden beds
• Planting trees
• Gravel Path
• Stepping stones
• Timber edging
• Turf

Minor Items:

• Letter Box
• L-Shaped Screen to hide service (water tank, AC) areas
• Clothesline installation

Expecting landscaping quotation from a Landscaper by tomorrow. Then we are ready to submit all three quotations (construction, flooring, landscaping) to our financial lender for loan approval.

Contract Signed!

Cordova Two MJH Classic Facade

We signed the construction contract with McDonald Jones Homes today. Initial date for signing the contract was set earlier for 31-Mar-2016. But they shared the soft copies of the contract only on 30-April-2016. We thought one partial day isn’t really enough to go through this very important legal document of nearly 100 pages, to get our feedback clarified and things corrected. We had to postpone the signing date by one week which is today (07-April-2016).

Meantime, we shared our concerns with MJH that few statements are not correct and some clauses are irrelevant. But they said this contract can’t be changed because it is a standard HIA contract. Our land is already registered and few survey reports are already available. But those are not reflected in the contract thus chances of increase in site cost are there!

So, we get our contract reviewed by a building & construction lawyer. And she mentioned that MJH can’t alter the text of HIA contract but surely can hand-amend items to reflect current situation. So we asked MJH so, and this time they agreed. Not sure why they themselves hadn’t suggested this earlier!

So, this morning we visited MJH office. Our concerns were taken into account and a few things were hand-amended in the contract. And we are finally happy. A big step indeed as this is our first home. It was nice meeting Kim who is working on behalf of our CLO Wendy.

However, there are two minor pending items. We asked for a slight change of location of alfresco water points. Also we have been asking for a hand shower installation option in bathroom and ensuite for last three months since we signed preliminary agreement, which is not resolved yet. Those will be fixed through post-contract variation. These items are already approved and wouldn’t cost any admin fee (usually whatever changes you make after signing the contract, there is an associated admin fee).

Now on MJH side, they will gather all required reports from different authorities; submit the plans to council (CDC for us). Looks like this approval process will take until end of May’2016. Then we need to provide Authority to commence construction (ACC) from our financial lender. And MJH will commence construction within 20 days of receiving ACC (may be around end June’2016). Our electrical appointments will be done sometime in between.

Looking at the timeline, it doesn’t look like we will be able to complete our home before Christmas. That’s too bad because tradesmen here are usually on leave in January L . Also bad weather is just starting. So, we will be losing two or more precious months. So at least ten more months to see the below floor plan to coming into live, fingers crossed!