Contract Appointment

Contract Appointment was with a wonderful young girl called Tharshi Roche at Porter Davis Head Office in Melbourne West.

It was a long day, had to go through many documents and read through the contract to get it signed. Firstly, none of that made any sense to us. We were lucky that Tharshi explained everything really well and made it easy for us to understand. She also gave us the option to read the document at home so we can sign later, which we didn’t refuse. But I knew it, even though we take the document at home I won’t have time to go through it.  

It had been few weeks now since the colour appointment and we had few changes in mind which we wanted to make. Tharshi did all the price calculation and provided us the final price with all the changes also contacted Hopburn with the new changes for us.  

My wife didn't like the under mounted sink in the kitchen, so she wanted to have a sink which has double bowl and drainer. It seemed hard but Tharshi did manage to find and provide us the sink at no extra cost. Here is the picture. 

I suggest, you make sure you do read the contract before signing it. Our builder gave us enough time to read or get it checked from external providers. We opted not to hire any external provider but at least we were given the option by the builder. So far in the whole process we didn’t feel pushed by the builder at any stage.

We paid $1000 deposit when we decided to go with Porter Davis, than paid another 2% when we signed the Tender and now 3% for signing the contract.

Here are Tharshi's details:

Tharshi Roche  |  Building Coordinator  |   Porter Davis Prestige West

T: 03 8331 2515   |   F: 03 8331 2501 

41-47 Thomsons Road Keilor Park VIC 3042

www.porterdavis.com.au  |  blog.porterdavis.com.au

Land Titled & Settled

On 08^th of Aug, our land is titled and settled in Featherbrook Estate.

Finally the long wait is over. The land is now settled and ready for us to start the build. Thats good that we finalized all the building requirement with Porter Davis earlier so it shouldn’t take longer for them to start the building process.

I thought to mention the overall timelines for our building process so everyone can have bit of idea how we have done so far.

April 2010 – We paid deposit for our land.

April 2010 – We started visit the display houses

March 2011 – Finalized Porter Davis builder and Churchill 36 plan

Aug 2011 – The land settled and titled.

I was told by the builder that they should be able to start by 09th Sep. Can't wait.... 

Hunt for Home Loan

We have sorted out the land, house plan, colours for the home but the most important thing which is required for us to build the new house is still need to be decided. We have spoken to few banks earlier and got our pre-approvals but didn’t get a time to hunt for a good home loan deal.

We had our previous home loan from OneDirect, an ANZ online bank. They do not offer home loans anymore so they asked us to speak to ANZ directly. We spoke to ANZ loan representative and got all the details and the offer they can provide us on the variable loan.

I have also gone through the following website to look for the offers available from the other lenders. Very useful website to find home loans, credit cards etc. Here is the link:

http://www.infochoice.com.au/

Also, we do our regular banking with CBA so CBA was another choice but they didn’t offer a good discount on the variable interest. so we decided not to proceed further with them.

One of my work colleague introduced me to a Westpac Bank manager as he had really good experience with him.  I decided to give him a call to discuss our loan options. In the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I should go with totally different bank but thought to give it a try. He asked for some information to access our loan eligibility and asked to call back the next day. He called back the next day with all the pre-approvals and the offer from Westpac. We were still not sure if we should change our bank as our existing mortgage was with ANZ (OneDirect).

After talking to the same colleague I told him our dilemma and he mentioned, give this guy a try and I am sure you will love the service. Based on his suggestion, we decided to move our existing mortgage with Westpac. We had another issue, my wife’s surname was change since we bought our last property which also needed to be changed in the existing mortgage & council.

We were amazed with the service provided by the Westpac banker. Firstly he spoke to the OneDirect bank, our council etc for the name change. Also, did everything to get the existing mortgage moved to Westpac without any issues. I literally didn’t have to do anything expect signing few documents and sending them back to him.

We absolutely loved the service and decided to do our next home loan with Westpac as well. Again, as expected, the service was so good I ended up referring few of my friends to the bank manager. We really liked the personal touch which we never had with any other bank or bank manager in the past. He personally knew our file and sorted out all the loan formalities with Porter Davis, Featherbrook builder & conveyancer. He also gave some good suggestions on the way which saved us few hundred dollars. I thought to give his details here, so if you are also seeking a personal touch with your next home loan, give this guy a try. I am sure you will love the service.

Shiv Aggarwal | Home Finance Manager | RETAIL & BUSINESS BANKING

Westpac Banking Corporation | 215 Smith Street, FITZROY VIC 3065
M 0428 709 127  | F 03 9416 3215 | | E shivshaktiaggarwal@westpac.com.au 
Winner Money magazine’s Business Bank of the Year 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011

Finally the home loan was approved and all the formalities were sorted. Thanks to Shiv (The Bank Manager) & Wespac for making it so easy for us.  

Colour Selection & Tiles Appointments

The day has arrived when we get to select the colours, tiles, lights for the house. I have made all the appointments in one day so all gets done at the same time and we have everything fresh in the mind. So I have taken a day off, the first appointment was with National Tiles in Port Melbourne. We arrived at 09:00AM and we were invited inside by a lovely young lady and she showed us the different tile options available as standard and upgrades. We started with bathroom tiles. We choose pretty much everything from Standard selection as 600 x 600 tiles were in standard and we didn’t want to choose any larger or rectangular tiles. We choose light brown colour for the floor and same but with glossy finish for the shower tiles. Only change we added was to add few more tiles in the shower to extend them till to the ceiling. My wife and I came up with the same tiles so no chance for an argument. Once we put all the bathroom tiles together they looked pretty dull and we wanted to add some feature in the tiles. We walked around the showroom and looked at different options available and selected two feature tile lines for Ensuite & bathroom.  

Tile selection: http://www.nationaltiles.com.au/ntstore/productdetails.php?catid=1&itemid=95&skuidx=MAXFL131

Tiles for Laundry was an easy choice, small rectangle dark brown glossy finish tiles. We used the same laundry tiles for our WIP pantry wall as we are putting an extra cook-top & range hood in the WIP. So all done in two hours.....

After the National tiles appointment, we had 30 mins free so decided to grab an early lunch at McDonalds

At 11:30AM we arrived at Hopburn Porter Davis show room in Port Melbourne. The buzzer need to be pressed to go upstairs. Once we pressed the buzzer the door was opened and we were asked to come upstairs. It was a good decision not to bring baby with us as there was no access for prams or lift.

Once we arrived upstairs, we were asked to look at the prestige collection (ONLY) as there were few other collections available on the different side of the walk. Porter Davis offer many different type of house collections and prestige is right on top & expensive in other words. We were asked to select the bricks first. We didn’t like any of the category 1 bricks...sorry I forgot to mention. There are many categories in each section. Category 1 is included with your package and category 2 and so on.. means more money. The higher you go, the more money you have to pay. So back to the brick section, we didn’t like any of the Category 1 brick or 2. The one we liked was in Category 3 brick called Homestead Mushroom. We wanted to have 50mm feature bricks at front of the house but they were only offering Standard 76mm bricks and said the 50mm option is no longer available. So it was bit disappointing as we were ready to pay extra for the feature brick. It looks very nice on some of the display home we have seen earlier.

We were having the colourbond roof so didn’t select the roof tiles and moved on to the gutter and window section. Here are some of the selections we made. Hope all turn out well.

Roof: Colourbond Jasper

Gutter: Jasper

Window Colour - Surfmist CT 

Entry Door – WIN 40 Obscure

Kitchen – Selected by wife....so hopefully turn out well...

Paint – FF Bone two coat finish.

There were so many other choices to be made and things to be selected you defiantly need to see all that before your appointment so you know what to expect during the day of appointment. We were lucky that we visited them few times earlier so knew what to expect. As usual, the staff was awesome. They helped us make the selection and all of the suggestion given were very nice. I and my wife were very happy with the customer service during and before the appointment.

Once we finish the colour selection, than we moved to a quiet little room next to the showroom for electricity appointment. Wow! It was lot harder than I expected. I think if you don’t get the lighting correct, it can change the whole outlook of the house.

We wanted the downlights but they were really expensive, about $105 per downlight. The girl gave us very good suggestion, get the existing lighting and all the wiring done and we can get the downlighting down once we moved in the house. It would be a cheaper solution than getting all done from Porter Davis. Again a wonderful advice. Also, the most importantly, I got the wiring for my home theatre. Finally at 05:00PM we were done, it was a long and a hectic day and had to make all the selections in a day.

On the way back home, we started to think if we made the right decision in selecting few colours. But then decided to leave it for a while and if we don’t like it we can get it changed later on.  

There were few upgrades we have done earlier in the plan and we thought to go standard on most of the things during colour appointment.

Here is the list of upgrades from the standard plan

1) Colour bond roof – Approx 5K

2) Cape York Facade – 4.5 K

3) Spa in Master En-suite – 2.5 K

4) Extended Alfresco – 5 K

5) Evaporate Cooling – 5.5 K 

6) Added another kitchen in WIP - A cooktop, rangehood and a sink, shelves etc. - Approx 6K

Homestead Mushroom

Color selection