Plans, finance and contracts come together

I have to say, our experience with this process to date has exceeded our expectations - by a long shot.

We've put in a heap of work in a pretty short time frame and thankfully it has seemed to come together - YEAHHH!

So what have we been up to..

After my last entry we started the process of finding a builder. Plan after plan, display home after display, sales person after sales person.

I know it's to be expected, but there are some shockingly appalling sales people out there - rude, pushy, condescending you name it we had the pleasure of meeting them. Of course we can't forget that one shocker who really took the cake, that arrogant soul who wouldn't give us the time of day, wouldn't show us a plan and wouldn't talk to us until we told him our exact spending dollar figure. I know he thought we were a lot younger than what we are, yep we get that a lot. I was asked for ID again last week - at 29 I guess it should be a compliment but its a bit of a joke! So anyway with a face like thunder we shot straight outta that place - even better when I read several reviews on that particular 'builder' and their levels of shoddiness. Ahh yes he did them proud.

So anyway, I guess I should explain why we couldn't put just any old house on our block, and why we're after something so particular.

First of all, it's a cottage block - so we need the garage at the back. Not such a big deal but there's a fair few builders who haven't quite cottoned onto the fact that a lot of the estates are planned this way now... and some of the ones who have only have generic uninspiring plans. And then the 'good' ones are so few and far between that you'd have the same house as your next door neighbour - luckily we dodged that bullet - just!!

Second, check out our view - we have a gorgeous park, and we're on what's called an 'interactive' block. Basically the developer has designed the housing around the park to encourage interaction between neighbours and the general community, encouraging 'features' out the front and front alfrescos etc. And why wouldn't you - it's gorgeous!!

So even at this stage (not factoring in any of our living preferences / requirements) we knew that we were going to have to do some 'tailoring' of builders generic plans.

Now a lot of the builders are pretty stubborn with modifying their plans - and I get that - but geees. One was telling us they allowed one change, one change only. Yeahhh we need something a little more flexible - seeya later. So that's how it went and we just kept going.

I guess I should note that Michael and I are both pretty creative people and by this stage had a really clear vision of what we were after - we just had to find it.

So we found a plan that was pretty close with lets call them builder Y. At first builder Y was great, they're a very reputable builder and they seemed to get what we were trying to create. Tick, tick.

So we meet with them the first time, then we met with them again to go through a couple of ideas that the sales guy had. Michael's parents came with us and I have to say I found the whole experience that evening entirely overwhelming, and I didn't have a good feeling about it all. When you get a feeling like that I think it's a sign and you just have to go with it.

So I suggested to Michael that we do some more exploring. And exploring we did, we turned that disheartened feeling into a mission of finding the perfect plan with the perfect builder for us. We were both trowelling the net looking at plans of every builder that we knew of - avoiding the dodgies of course!! And then Michael found it!!!

After that moment, everything fell into place. The next day we trekked our way up to Ellenbrook, over an hour later and we were almost in another dimension. That was where we met Matt.

For the first time, it looked like we might actually be able to get what we were looking for. Michael was completely caught off guard. We finally found someone who -really- listened and understood us and what we were trying to achieve.

That evening Matt sent us through some freehand sketches displaying what we'd discussed. They were AMAZING.

As soon as Michael saw my face, he knew - and I knew that I knew - this was it.

From that night on things have really just progressed and we're really happy with how Goodlife have responded. Everything has been waiting for our builders contract to be completed. We were told it would take until mid June for this to happen. We got them yesterday. Brilliant.

We're currently going through the process of picking colours and finishes, and finalising our final plans. Prestart will be in 2 weeks or so.

Looking forward to unconditional finance and everything being carved in stone!