The Council

I received a phone call the other day from our Customer Service Officer at Metricon with the latest news of the council progress.

In the last couple of post, I have mentioned that our development plan was submitted to the Blacktown Council for approval.  I checked the council website nearly everyday only to find that our development application status was approved not released since the 24 February 2011.

As I am quite new in building industry, this is quite confusing.  Approved not released should mean that we are approved but they haven't let our builder know that this was the case yet?  Having asked around at the H1 forum website, this site is really is useful, someone replied that our plans need to be sent up to the stamping department but knowing how the council or the government works, it would take ages for them to do all this.  Not taking into account that they will make mistakes!

So Metricon rang me about four days ago with the latest update from the council.  Our CSO said that the council officer who is looking after our development application told her that our plan still needs to be notified to our neighbors until the 23 March 2011.

As we would be one of the first who start the building in our block, I thought that I won't have any neighbor until they all started building.  However I was wrong!  For those who have settled on their land, they are now my new neighbor although I haven't met them yet and accordingly they all will get development notice letter of our house from the Blacktown council.  Obviously this will also apply to them who are going to build near our block of land.

So further delay until the actual building project can commence.

At this stage, we have gone way past our tender price period of 240 days.  Our tender price expired on the 17 January 2011.  So by contract agreement, we would be charged by Metricon a penalty of 0.5% of the contract price per month if we haven't not start building by that date.  This means that we would get charge about $1,500 per month if the building stage hasn't commence.

Needless to say that we are about two months overdue.  However our CSO advised us that Metricon is willing to extend the tender period due to the closure period during the Christmas holiday and waived all the penalty charge of 0.5% up to this stage for us!  So our new tender period expires on the 17 April 2011 to which I hope by that time we really should start building.

I'm quite speechless as I thought company giant with the size of Metricon would be quite hard to negotiate let alone waiving charges but for them taking the initiative of doing this for us, it completely changed my mind and perception about the conscience of some people I guess.

Although we have a setback from the council but at least our minds are put at ease with this news.  This would also mean that I don't have to be anxious and biting my nails waiting for the council approval.

From the bottom of my heart, I can only say thank you Metricon for giving us such a relieve.

On another news, our internal color and electrical appointment with Metricon is on the 16 March 2011.  Two more days to go and we get to pick the internal feature of our dream house!!  So excited and we can't wait!!

I will write another post when we finish with the color selection.  Until then, see you all next time.