Settlement at Last!

Settlement finally happened this week on Tuesday 14th June 2016 and the whole process went very smooth.  

For my conveyancing I used Murray Dribbus from Dribbus Kovacevic Lawyers and as previously mentioned I used Paul Wright and his team at Choice Home Loans in Wollongong.  If you need a conveyancer or mortgage broker I would highly recommend these guys!

As for the estate, the roads into the estate were opened on Wednesday evening and I finally drove into the estate for the first time on Thursday night.  After 15 months of waiting for the land to be completed it was a good feeling to finally drive up to my block!

Here is a photo I took today of the block:

 As you will see, my footpath on the left hand side is not yet complete and despite the subdivision supposedly being 'finished' there is still a bit of tidying up that LendLease have left to do.

When I told McDonald Jones Homes that my land was registered they proceeded to order the various reports that are required, including the Section 149 certificate.  For those that have never heard of a Section 149 certificate before, it is basically a document that is generated by the council which contains information about the zoning restrictions and development controls applicable to the lot, including bush fire and flood classifications.

Now the real shock here is that the certificate came back with the following under the flood control section:

Uncategorised Flood Risk - Information held by Council indicates that all or part of this property MAY be affected by flooding and it is advised that a suitably qualified engineer should be engaged to evaluate the flood risk. As such, development of the land will be assessed on merit and Councils' Floodplain Risk Management Development Control Plan (DCP) may apply. For further information please contact Council's Engineering Services on 4221 6111. 

After discussing with Shellharbour City Council's relevant department, it turns out their flood modelling doesn't account for any of the earthworks that were undertaken for Stage 1 of Calderwood Valley and their model says the land is flood prone.  From further discussion with LendLease they apparently were already aware of this issue and are going to sort it out with council.

So here's hoping that all of this will be sorted out over the next few weeks before the updated plans come back from McDonald Jones...

Finally Registered.....Settlement Next!!

After 3 weeks of patiently waiting for the land to be registered, I received a phone call on Monday 30th May 2016 from LendLease to let me know that my land was finally registered!

I then received this letter by email the following day:

Whilst I was over the moon for the land to finally be registered, I found it extremely disappointing that LendLease think we should be settling on the land whilst it is still a construction site and has no unimpeded access.

I went out last Friday and finally got to stand on my block, however, what LendLease's letter doesn't tell you is that you have to wear PPE (hi vis and hard hat) on site and be escorted around unless you have a 'white card'.

All that said, the JK Williams guys on site (LendLease's civil contractor) were great to deal with and more than happy to escort you around, you really couldn't ask for more helpful people!  From chatting with them it gave me a lot more confidence that they would actually meet their stated deadline for opening the road...

On the finance note, once the new title details were provided to CBA they were quick to finalise my loan contract and are ready to settle as soon as we get a settlement date and time.   The team at Choice Home Loans in Wollongong have been great at pushing the loan through (as well as answering all of my questions) and hopefully the rest of the process is just as smooth with CBA!

So for now I'm just finalising my landscape plan and waiting for settlement so that my soil tests and surveys can get done!