Well, we're creeping forwards, albeit slowly.
As regards the sale of the house we're currently living in, I discovered - by reading the local paper, mind you, not because either our landlord or managing agent thought to tell me - that our landlord has slashed the price of this place. Indeed, the advert has the price crossed out and the literate phrase, "Ouch! Make me an offer!" written over it. All of which presumably indicates that the pressure is on him to sell at least one of his properties and he's taking action accordingly. I am sure he would maintain that there's no need for us to panic, but somehow our comfortable belief that as the property was vastly over-priced and therefore wouldn't sell and therefore there was no need to panic is evaporating... Consequently I am about to start ringing round estate agents and making bookings to view properties. I'll go and see what I can this week, while Michael's away, and shortlist some properties (hopefully...) to look at when he gets back next week. It's a total pain in the neck.
Meanwhile, back at the block... We HAVE the DA paperwork for the house but the council planning officer apparently 'didn't notice' that the plans were submitted with a swimming pool clearly marked, hence a number of frantic phone calls which have resulted in Christian having to submit additional paperwork for additional approvals which will result in an additional Construction Certificate and associated additional fees. Ho hum. Quite how one could have 'missed' a large pool clearly marked in both text and plans I'm not sure.
Construction Certificates do seem to me to be a licence to collect money. We paid whopping fees to get the DA, for which the 'average' processing period through this council is allegedly 12 weeks, or so they like to claim. But in fact it's taken over 20 weeks and they managed to miss the pool. But then, of course, one has to get Construction Certificates, which effectively sign off at various benchmarks throughout the construction phase, resulting in an Occupation Certificate if you've ticked all the boxes in the process. We've had to separate out the Construction Certificates for the shed and the house, otherwise the completion of one would be dependent upon the completion of the other, and of course we need the shed to be built first to provide us with storage and the builder with amenities during construction. Separating out the Construction Certificate for the pool will at least mean we can get an Occupation Certificate for the house without needing to complete the pool (which we can't yet afford to build!), so that makes sense, but I do find paying for another one slightly annoying. We're haemmorhaging money and the build hasn't yet started. I'm not exactly surprised, though; after all, I have watched several series of Grand Designs with a certain amount of horror!
We should get the Construction Certificate for the shed through this week, which will enable the shed contractor to employ a concreter to pour the slab. This then needs to dry (about a week to ten days, I think) before the walls and roof can be put on. Then we will have somewhere we can store our stuff - including all the boxes currently in the house plus excess furniture, given that we'll have to up-sticks and move soon.
We won't get the Construction Certificate for the main house through until we've signed a contract with a builder and they've presented copies of their licence and insurance to Council. And we can't get our mortgage finalised with the bank until we've engaged a builder and signed that contract... and we're waiting for Dan Duffy to get back to us with an indication of a price before we can decide what to do. Both he and John Newton are still in the running, but we are slightly worried about John's view of things: he maintains he can't build the house for less than $500,000 which is all very fine but we just don't have that kind of money. We thought initially that he might not be that interested in the job, given that he seems to be in demand locally, but jobs must be drying up at the moment because he phoned us to enquire how we were getting on. However, he's not willing to go through a pricing process for us: he just wants to give us a rough estimate. He has offered to 'supply goods at cost' for the build and negotiate a fixed builders' fee on top, but I have to say that everyone we've mentioned this too has shaken their heads and said it's a con, as we'd have no way of knowing whether the price of the supplies was genuine, the lowest available or heavily marked-up! And I have to say that while it appears to be a generous offer, it isn't as transparent as it seems... Dan, by contrast, is out there pricing everything up and looking around for good suppliers at the best price, and wants to talk to us about the various options and the cost implications thereof. Hmmm. We'll see what happens.
So there you go. I have three main tasks - in addition to my own work! - while Michael's away: nag Council about getting the Construction Certificate for the shed into my sticky little mitts; pursue Dan about his pricing exercise; and finding us somewhere else to live in the meantime. Lucky me!
Showing posts with label selling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label selling. Show all posts
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Monday, October 6, 2008
Water, water
Water does seem to play a big part in our life at Wakelands Road, particularly when there isn't any. You'll recall us running out of water late last year when we didn't understand how the bore/tank/hose/tank/pump system worked, and the belly-laughs we had trying to convince our managing agent that the noise of water in our bedroom betokened the hot water system gaily pumping our drinking water out into the paddock...
A week or so ago the "water feature" that diverts half of the pool cleaning pump away from cleaning the pool ceased to flow because the motor went and the motor had to be replaced as the water went green and furry.
Yesterday we tried to turn on said new pump and nothing happened: no water flowed through the water feature and into the swimming pool, but we don't think the motor has failed (although we're not sure what the problem is, exactly).
Today's moment of amusement came when Michael tried to turn on the pump leading from the bore up to the above-ground holding tank, thinking that he'd pump up a tankful of water and use it to help fill the swimming pool which has been gradually going down through evaporation as we've had quite a dry winter. Well nothing happened. Or more accurately, the pump sprang into action as soon as the power was switched on but nothing came out of the ground.
Does this mean that there's no more water in the bore? I guess it could be the case, after all I don't suppose we're the only household around here using the bore - it would be quite odd if a geological feature like that was reserved exclusively for this house. Or does it mean that co-incidentally the water pumps are failing almost simultaneously?
Whatever the answer, our problems are compounded by the fact that it's a bank holiday and our managing agency is closed, and as it's the school holidays our landlord is away. Of course, this house is also on the market, and our landlord is going to be thrilled to bits that things are breaking down at a point when he's trying to sell the place because he doesn't have any money, so I daresay we won't be popular when he finds out!
Talking about selling the house, one of the selling agents brought around an American family on Saturday to look at things, but they didn't get as far as looking in the office where Michael, Ella and I were holed up because as they said to Jim, they really loved the scenery but would bulldoze the house! They also commented that for the money they'd expect everything to be spick-and-span. I don't envy the agents, really. The house is on the market with two companies, one of which is the agency through whom we rent it, and both agents had the tricky task of telling our landlord that they think he's put it on the market for too much money. Jim said our landlord clearly thinks they don't know how much he paid for it, but of course they have access to previous sales figures through the Land Registry. So they know that he's asking $100,000 more than he paid for it two years ago, and the problem is that the market here is stagnant and the house has been quietly deteriorating. Our landlord has put in a new kitchen, but it's nothing flash and hasn't been properly finished so it would have cost him $8,000 at most and certainly doesn't justify the hike in price.
Anyone buying this place would have to spend money on the spa (which is cracking and will need to be replaced), the swimming pool (a 25 year old concrete pool with deteriorating grout and half a cleaning system which has broken below-ground pipes), the pool area (rotten timbers and uneven tiling), the gutters (almost all of them need serious attention), the roof (decidedly dodgy and leaking), the bathrooms (all of which need renovation) and the windows (all of which have corroding aluminium frames). All up you'd probably have to spend the best part of $100,000! And for the same money around here you could buy a 4 or 5 bed new build home on less land but with a new pool and ocean views...
Who knows what will happen. My money is on our landlord reducing the price of the house he lives in and managing to sell it, and thus booting us out of here so that he can move back in. I'll cope well enough with that as long as it happens after Christmas! I just don't want to up sticks and move again now. If we can get our building going and put the shed up, and if I can see progress and we have to move the other side of Christmas then I might be more sanguine about the idea of living in a caravan on-site, or moving into the shed for a while. We could just say stuff it and set about finding a new home for 6 - 9 months right now, but I don't have the energy and we've got enough other changes on the cards, not least getting our daughter through the process of starting at a new school.
A week or so ago the "water feature" that diverts half of the pool cleaning pump away from cleaning the pool ceased to flow because the motor went and the motor had to be replaced as the water went green and furry.
Yesterday we tried to turn on said new pump and nothing happened: no water flowed through the water feature and into the swimming pool, but we don't think the motor has failed (although we're not sure what the problem is, exactly).
Today's moment of amusement came when Michael tried to turn on the pump leading from the bore up to the above-ground holding tank, thinking that he'd pump up a tankful of water and use it to help fill the swimming pool which has been gradually going down through evaporation as we've had quite a dry winter. Well nothing happened. Or more accurately, the pump sprang into action as soon as the power was switched on but nothing came out of the ground.
Does this mean that there's no more water in the bore? I guess it could be the case, after all I don't suppose we're the only household around here using the bore - it would be quite odd if a geological feature like that was reserved exclusively for this house. Or does it mean that co-incidentally the water pumps are failing almost simultaneously?
Whatever the answer, our problems are compounded by the fact that it's a bank holiday and our managing agency is closed, and as it's the school holidays our landlord is away. Of course, this house is also on the market, and our landlord is going to be thrilled to bits that things are breaking down at a point when he's trying to sell the place because he doesn't have any money, so I daresay we won't be popular when he finds out!
Talking about selling the house, one of the selling agents brought around an American family on Saturday to look at things, but they didn't get as far as looking in the office where Michael, Ella and I were holed up because as they said to Jim, they really loved the scenery but would bulldoze the house! They also commented that for the money they'd expect everything to be spick-and-span. I don't envy the agents, really. The house is on the market with two companies, one of which is the agency through whom we rent it, and both agents had the tricky task of telling our landlord that they think he's put it on the market for too much money. Jim said our landlord clearly thinks they don't know how much he paid for it, but of course they have access to previous sales figures through the Land Registry. So they know that he's asking $100,000 more than he paid for it two years ago, and the problem is that the market here is stagnant and the house has been quietly deteriorating. Our landlord has put in a new kitchen, but it's nothing flash and hasn't been properly finished so it would have cost him $8,000 at most and certainly doesn't justify the hike in price.
Anyone buying this place would have to spend money on the spa (which is cracking and will need to be replaced), the swimming pool (a 25 year old concrete pool with deteriorating grout and half a cleaning system which has broken below-ground pipes), the pool area (rotten timbers and uneven tiling), the gutters (almost all of them need serious attention), the roof (decidedly dodgy and leaking), the bathrooms (all of which need renovation) and the windows (all of which have corroding aluminium frames). All up you'd probably have to spend the best part of $100,000! And for the same money around here you could buy a 4 or 5 bed new build home on less land but with a new pool and ocean views...
Who knows what will happen. My money is on our landlord reducing the price of the house he lives in and managing to sell it, and thus booting us out of here so that he can move back in. I'll cope well enough with that as long as it happens after Christmas! I just don't want to up sticks and move again now. If we can get our building going and put the shed up, and if I can see progress and we have to move the other side of Christmas then I might be more sanguine about the idea of living in a caravan on-site, or moving into the shed for a while. We could just say stuff it and set about finding a new home for 6 - 9 months right now, but I don't have the energy and we've got enough other changes on the cards, not least getting our daughter through the process of starting at a new school.
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
It never rains...
Our landlord just popped in for a brief chat, to tell us that he's putting this house on the market!
BUGGER
Better get on with building our house then, I suppose.
BUGGER
Better get on with building our house then, I suppose.
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