What's happening

We finally had our site works price come back about 2 weeks ago and got a huge shock. Problems with the sandpad on the block not suiting the block rating mean it has to be removed and another sand pad put on to replace it as the current one can't be compacted properly for a concrete house pad to suit our house. The current sand pad would be fine if we could build a house that didn't require a concrete pad. ie pole house or one on stumps but the developer has excluded these kinds of builds from the development. :(

The upshot is the site works were to have cost us 45k instead of somewhere between 25-30k. About 18k over budget. I say "were", because we've spent the last 2 weeks negotiating for a better result and with a lot of support and work from our building/housing manager we've been able to get a great deal from the building company. They've offered to reduce the site works by 6 thousand and ..... after further negotiation they've changed the percentage of each progress repayment for the build so that instead of having only 10% left to pay at house completion we will pay 35%. This will save us a heap of interest on the mortgage and will mean we will not have used much of the banks money at all before final payment. Unfortunately the additional costs means we are right at the upper limit of our money. This means any plans for finishing off inside the house will have to wait until after the house is built and we will have to consider refinancing.

Tomorrow we are booked in to sign off on the final changes and details on the house and the builders also want us to sign the final contract to lock in the details so they can progress with it. . Time is ticking away and every moment we delay now will be costing them money. We did have 45 days from prestart to sign but atm they are being very generous and a month has almost past since prestart anyway.

:)