Apologies to anyone following this blog for me not updating this sooner, but here goes...
Prior to DA Submission
From land registration to DA submission it took just under 8 weeks and I found the process from MJH very frustrating as they were just giving excuse after excuse. In particular, for almost a week they put my job on hold because they claimed there was an error with my Section 149 certificate and would not tell me what the issue was. In the end, it turned out the error they thought they had, I had already resolved it and provided them the correct Section 149 certificate weeks ago.
The second issue was that when the developer approval came back they picked up that MJH had not provided a 650mm dropped edge beam to the zero lot line component of my house as per the requirements of the Section 88b instrument. This resulted in me being credited for the previous smaller dropped edge beam variation and given a variation of $2845 for the 650mm dropped edge beam.
Whilst this should of been a simple case of quickly getting the plans updated with a simple 5 min drafting change to fix their mistake, I had to wait a week for them to make this change. Once this was received my CLO was then trying to tell me they couldn't submit my DA until they had the engineering plans despite me already calling her out previously on this lie. Sadly, it took a call to customer service manager to ensure that the DA actually got submitted without further delays...
DA Submission
DA submission to council initially turned out to be a quick and smooth process with Shellharbour City Council approving the DA in just over two weeks. It was actually faster getting approval from council than the certifier that other MJH client's in my estate went through!
From here things went a bit pear shaped, initially council posted the DA to my vacant block instead of MJH and then it turned out they had stuffed up the DA by applying incorrectly conditions of consent. Firstly, they had applied a BAL12.5 rating to my approval and secondly they had said my gutters couldn't over hang the maintenance easement down one side of my block.
Fortunately MJH's certifier accepted an email from the council saying those conditions could be ignored, but MJH and the certifier wanted me to get the DA formally modified.
So I submitted the approval and assumed that because it was a council error they would be reasonable and end up fixing it for no charge. Oh how wrong was I was. Initially they wanted to charge me over $600 to fix their mistakes. However, after arguing with the council manager he ever so kindly said he would reclassify the type of modification and only charge me $71 for it but I had to change the wording of what I wanted the condition of consent to be in regards to the maintenance easement.
When I got the DA modification, the wording was even more lenient than what I had initially asked for and was incorrect (but in my favour) compared to the Section 88b instrument. The level of incompetence at Shellharbour City Council really is unbelievable and I guess it's no wonder they were declared unfit for the future and are being forced to merge...
Construction List
Once the DA plans were finally received by MJH, I sent them straight off to my mortgage broker and I was very fortunate to have Comm Bank approve them in 3 days as my broker was able to get the bank to put a fast track on getting the approval issued (Comm Bank told me it normally takes at least 5 days).
Again, I can't recommend highly enough the team in at Choice Home Loans Wollongong. They have been helpful every step of the way and they certainly make you feel like a valued client and not just another number in the system.
With all approvals in place, MJH now slipped me with this tender extension variation:
"We would like to provide a onetime Price Increase offer in view of your current Tender Period having expired. This offer is made in confidence and must not be disclosed to any other parties. The offer is to charge a maximum price increase of $6,000. This is a substantial cost saving for yourselves and means that you will only be paying this amount and not the difference between the Base Price of your selected home design and the current Base Price of that design."
This was a standard variation that was sent to I believe everyone in my estate that went over their tender extension and this was despite us all being told before paying deposits and signing contracts that going over tender would be $1000/mo up to 6 months and there was no talk of there being a fixed minimum amount.
Fortunately I had the wisdom to make MJH put the tender expiry price rise in writing before I signed my contract and after argument with MJH they reverted to calculating my tender extension by that. However, I should have only been liable for 5 months of tender extension payments as I was only pushed into 6 months by their own mistakes. MJH refused to charge me for 5 months of tender extension payments but were ever so kind to only charge me for 5.5 months instead of the 6 months they were initially requesting. Isn't it great to be able to charge your customers for your own mistakes...
With that variation now sorted I was placed on the construction list.
