Nearly There!

We are *THIS* close to getting our keys to the house.

I finally received the bank cheque in the mail today after what it seems to be an endless argument between me and the bank...  Don't ask, I'd rather not re-visit that whole experience again.

I immediately ring our site supervisor to arrange a new time for the handover.  As much as I like it to be tomorrow, unfortunately he is not working tomorrow...  Story of my life.

So we are booked for Wednesday morning for our handover.  YAY!!

It's been long overdue but we are glad that we know have at least a date of when we can move in.  Landscaping should be done by that time also, to which I need to post a detail about it.  I'll do that in the near future.

First thing first, getting the key to the house is our priority at the moment and flooring is going to be layed on the very same day.

PCI. How did it go.

As our last post mentioned, we had our PCI walkthrough last week.

Thanks to Karla with the mother of all checklist, the walkthrough was smooth and we actually have a plan and know what to look for.

We've also been inside the house a few times before the PCI and we had a good look through around the house in preparation for our PCI.  In addition to the list, we felt we are prepared to show our supervisor what we are not happy with.

In all honesty, however, we find very little fault or defects with the quality of the build.  Our supervisor is a man of his word and cleaned everything prior to our appointment.  He guided us into every room and explained to us, if there is anything that needs explanation, very thoroughly and more importantly he didn't rush us to finish our inspection.

I've heard some stories from other people around the area saying that their supervisor rushed them to complete their inspection and got them to sign that the house is basically near perfect.

There is not much blue sticker around the house.  We had a good look on the level and bumps on the ceiling and on the slab.  Tested the light switch and power points.  Check the cornices and skirting board.  Test all windows and doors.  Opening and closing the cupboards.  Tested the water, etc. as you would before you buy a house.

Paint work was excellent and I really couldn't find any patchy spot for the paint as you normally would around the corner after you fix something.  At least that should be visible but nothing to be seen around our house.

Only some of the minor stuff like all of bathroom gaps need another seal, missing light fittings (but it turns out that all appliances and fittings will be fitted after we move in and we are ready), mortar joint on the brickwork needs some touch up and servicing the windows so that it rolls easily.  That is all they need to fix from our list.  Our supervisor said that it wouldn't take long for him to finish and as of today our dream house is ready for hand over.

That is our next step.  Get a bank cheque from our bank, have another walkthrough with our supervisor and if we are happy, hand him over the cheque and he will give us the key to our dream house.

So where's the hold up?  Why haven't we got our keys yet?

Well it is simply because we haven't got the bank cheque yet...

I believe I've posted something about our banks many months ago.  Well that opinion hasn't change until today or in the foreseeable future and don't even mention our broker...

The request to draw the cheque for final payment was made last week and today there is still no sight of cheque to be seen in our mailbox or the bank branch.  Apparently it'll take them 6 - 9 days to send the cheque to us...

It is what it is and it's another setback for us.  So close yet so far.

We all only wish that the cheque would come through early next week so we can get the keys already!

PS. If you like a copy of the PCI checklist, I am more than happy to share that with you.  Please use the "Contact Us" page to... well... contact us.

Just to note that there are 44 pages in this document (you heard me correct, I kid you not), so my recommendation is to read it carefully and change the document to suit your project home.

I HATE BANKS

OK so I've heard a lot of warning and people experiences about the stress and grieve that house building experience can cause to someone.  Mainly they are experiences related to builders not being responsive, they take too long to provide the final construction drawing, contract not being drawn up properly, site supervisor gone AWOL or even someone dump land fill on their block of land preventing them from going to construction.

Yea yea I've heard all of that.  But with my building experience stress and grieve, my builders hasn't done anything that stress me out as yet.  In fact the organization or institution that stressing me out is THE BANK!  Just a conspiracy theory here but I think they have read my blog about them and they decided to make everything difficult for me...

What happened?

I've made my first claim for base with the bank and that went through just fine.  We even got a text message on the phone saying that they have paid the base claim.

It is not until the second claim which is the frame claim that again we are given the run around.  When I first talk to their mortgage servicing hotline, they said that they don't know what was going on and they needed to further investigate the issue.  I was confused that they didn't know because it was them that asked me to ring them in the first place!

So finally after two hours of waiting, someone rang me back saying that perhaps there was a mistake in our paper work and we don't have enough fund in our account to complete the construction.  Say what?!? Are you serious?! How is it possible that we didn't have enough loan to cover the construction cost when we specifically applied 80% of the amount on the tender that Metricon sent, which I forwarded upon my application?!?!

Again, as usual, they just direct you to the broker who originated the application.  However the broker just quickly said that it was the bank fault and the paper work is fine.  Now I don't know who to believe and I don't really want to know either.  The bank said this loan was originated from the broker and only the broker can do something about it, so please just fix the issue.

After three days of running around and being stuffed around and talking to a number of people on the mortgage servicing hotline and they all gave me different explanations and stories which confuse the hell out of me, the bank finally said that the loan was fine and it is only that this claim that we had the shortfall as we need to contribute our 20% first.  The rest of the progress payment stages should be fine.  The broker was still adamant that we should be able to claim the payment but then so very quickly changed her story to that of the bank.  She also failed to notify me that the bank used only our first progress payment schedule as a base for the property value.

So if we just need to honor the contract, which we don't even know what they wrote in there and there is no specific clause that we needed to contribute our 20% deposit first (I checked twice), why they didn't explain that in the first place and we would have been happy to just pay that 20%.  Why keep telling us that our loan is not enough to complete the construction?!

Seriously, both bank and the broker are a total failure!

The only reason why I went with the bank was because they were the only bank that can give me enough loan to cover our construction cost and the value report were high.  Other banks are generally lower but if this is to be the grieve that I have to have, I should have used another bank instead.

But I don't think I can recommend my broker in this case.  She is probably ok for you to purchase a ready to move in mortgage but construction loan? Better stay clear out of it.

Authority to Commence Construction

After a long epic saga of chasing around and calling a number of people, I have finally received my builder's pack or the Authority to Commence Construction pack in my inbox this morning.

Well in a way I pushed them to send a fax to me with all the documents I need.  I know that I really didn't have to call the bank as I went through a broker and should just let the broker handle these things but I think from my previous blog post, we can all agree that my broker really is a bit of a dud and doesn't know what she was doing.

Yes, I did rang the bank yesterday and asked them where was the letter that they said it was sent last week.

I was told that it takes about 1 week for the letter to be processed and send to me.  I find that quite ridiculous actually, but having said that as this is the bank that we are talking about so I don't find it as a surprise anymore.

They offered for the document to be sent via fax which I accepted immediately and forwarded to Metricon right away.

However just we are still on this case, I must also say that they can't even follow a simple instruction.  I've asked for the document to be attention to myself as I am using the fax number at work.  However the fax cover page with all the necessary recipient detail was filled with my wife's detail.  Although they did get the fax number correct.  Fortunately I was still able to get the fax from the unidentified fax list as obviously my wife doesn't work here.  On top of that, I failed to understand that how can they get the address of the construction wrong??  All other loan documents that I have, were correct and had the correct address but the pack that I received was wrong??  Well when I sent this to Metricon, they were quite happy that this was the right document so I don't chase it up with the bank as quite frankly I couldn't be bothered doing it anymore.  So long everyone is happy, I'll just go with that.

Go figure...

Finally, all the documents, letter and notice that Metricon require to progress with our construction is with them already.  The last piece of the puzzle, which is the final construction drawing is the only outstanding item that we need to agree on.

Also our CSO at Metricon has been replaced by someone else who happens to be the team leader as she has left the company and moved on with her role.  I can only thank her for the help that she has provided thus far.

I can only hope that now things can go a lot more smoother and quicker as I am hoping to have move in to the new house before my son starts the kindergarten next year.

You can take that to the bank.... NOT!!!

Ok, I think I have had enough fair share of banking frustration over the last couple of months, that I just need to say something in this post.

I know that I'm inexperienced when it comes to the construction of our home let alone understanding mortgage process and finances but seriously though, the people or the organisation who is funding this construction should have known this better than I am and explain to me in details when I asked the question.

That's right this is about you ANZ.

First, it was the land settlement that got us running around like headless chuck in the city chasing and getting people to sign and witness our mortgage document.  Yes that was all processed on the day and we managed to slip in to the settlement just in time before we got the penalties from the sale contract.  However this didn't come with "our" sacrifice.  It was a working day and I had to slip out of work in between my meetings and my boss did called me whilst on my way to hand back the mortgage document to Perpetual.  Even then we were treated cynically by the reception as it was nearly 5pm.

Where was the courtesy to at least let us know that our loan application was expired and needed to be refreshed?!?  Where was the communication to the client??

I understand that everyone made mistakes but twice in a row?  I thought by now the bank should learn that they need to improve communication to the client.

The second time was just more chaos and more frustration.

This time we needed an Authority to Commence Construction (ACC) letter that Metricon needed before everything can be submitted to the construction department.  So I rang my broker to find out where can I get my hand on this kind of letter.

As this is also the first construction loan application request from us, our broker for obvious reason, tried to get some more information on how to obtain this letter from the bank.

After quite some time there were no response or reply back from the bank.  I asked my broker if she learned anything from the bank and she said no.  So a couple of weeks ago, I tried to call the mortgage department of ANZ customer service myself.

Skipping all the obvious phone hospitality of customer service people, I was told that I needed to submit a few more document to the bank but this can only be done via the broker as our loan was originated from there.

I gave this update to my broker and she said to leave it with her and she will chase everything up.  I stressed to her that our tender was due to expire in 17 April and I need the letter before that date to avoid getting more penalty or price increase from Metricon.

When I told her the update, there was still a good couple of weeks left before the 17 April and I honestly thought that we should be able to get the letter before then.

A week gone by and finally my broker rang to tell me that my loan application needed to be refreshed again!!!  To which I find quite hard to believe as it is still less than 3 months since our last refresh.  But ANZ was adamant that our application needed to be settled by 30 March.  However we can't really do anything during that time as we only received our council approval on 1 April.

So here we go again with the payslips, wifey income statement and future tax return and loan application form all over again.  At this stage this has gone past the 17 April deadline of going to construction.

And to make it worst, as this was at the Easter period, there is little chance that this can all be done before then.  Then right after the Easter break, I got a call from my broker telling me that ANZ credit assessor wasn't impressed because we didn't need to submit the loan application refresh again as our loan won't expire until the end of this month.  I am not quite happy as this was requested by ANZ initially when they advised that our loan has expired and needed to be refreshed!

She told me I need to ring the customer service line so that they can mail or fax the ACC letter to me as a matter of priority.

Ok, so I rang the customer service line again.  Again skipping the all necessities of customer service phone etiquette, I was told that they can only send this ACC letter after we settle or make our first draw down from the bank.  Honestly I went off at him because what he was saying doesn't make any sense at all!!  I mean really how can I send them the first progress payment instruction without any Authority to Commence Construction letter from the bank?!?!?!?!?  Hence the name of the letter "Authority to Commence Construction" for crying out loud.

He was still adamant that the bank doesn't send this type of letter and also said that the bank should have sent everything we need in our mortgage pack which include the progress payment instruction form.  I did receive this pack and there was a progress payment instruction form included in that pack.  So he advised that the form was all I need to submit to Metricon.

So after I gave the update to my broker, I forwarded this to our CSO at Metricon only for her to tell me that this wasn't the letter that they were looking for.  However it does suggest that the bank is ready to make the payment.  Our CSO offered her help and asked if I have the number of our banking rep at ANZ.  Well as I went through a broker, I didn't have a banking rep at ANZ so I gave the customer service line instead and my broker details.

At this stage, I was becoming more and more agitated.  I rang our broker and told her that this is NOT the letter they wanted.  She said that she will ring her contact again to chase up the letter.  At the same time I also said that I will ring ANZ customer service again.

I honestly can't remember how many times that I have rang ANZ mortgage customer service line that day but again skipping all the greeting necessities, this time I got a customer service rep that advised me that the initial advise that the first rep gave me was completely and utterly wrong!!!

Imagine the growing frustration that I now have with ANZ!!

After all the necessary identification process, I learned that our file was still empty and all the documents required for them to make the so called" Builder's Pack" which include the ACC letter is no where to be seen!!!

I really like to explode here but I tried to be wise with the words that I chose and told the rep I had sent these documents couple of weeks ago to my broker because it was required by the credit assessor.

She explained that it might be still on the way to them for issuance of the pack.

At this point of time, I got some news from our CSO at Metricon saying that she had rang ANZ and escalated the matter to the supervisor and have the pack send to us as soon as possible.  Our broker did the same and escalated the matter to the so called higher management.

Finally today, I got a text message two in fact, believe it or not, from ANZ bank saying that the construction loan pack has been sent to our mailing address and they need another documentation which is the Builder's insurance certificate and Public Liability document, to which my broker liaised with our CSO at Metricon.

So after wasting a good 3 hours of my working time and ringing a dozen number of people varying from broker, Metricon and ANZ, that finally I got an answer that I wanted and ANZ really did let us know that it is coming?!?!?!?

I've had delays with the council approval and the last thing I need was more delays from the bank.  I did got what I needed to give to Metricon but honestly I'm still not happy with ANZ.

I mean how do you expect to believe someone if they can't even answer a simple question that I have like "how to obtain the ACC letter?" where they were supposed to be the expert and they are the funder to my construction loan.

I did ask a simple question didn't I?

However from this experience I can only thank our CSO at Metricon for all the help that she has provided so far.  I suppose this is one of the term we called "Going the Distance"...

Having said that, we still haven't got our final construction drawing, which is the last piece of the puzzle before going to construction.  I know that it's coming but I wish it was sooner.

I just hope I can use this as my case to argue about the price increase...

Well enough raving from me and thank you for reading this far.

And it's all ours.....

As of 2pm on this day, the land is finally ours!!  All ours!!

We bought the land back in May last year and it has taken nearly one year but it's finally ours.  We are a proud owner of a block of land at The Ponds.

Like I have described in the previous post, everything seemed to have happen all at the very same time for us.  Whilst we are excited that everything is progressing for us, although a little bit slower than we expected, but we are also overwhelmed and amazed with the amount of effort that we are putting in to get to this far.

I never thought for a second that this would be an easy journey.  Especially with all the tell-tales I have been hearing so far.  But I haven't heard anything bad about the bank.  Well I happened to have one pain to add to the list!

I've said in my previous post that our bank has caused us a lot of grief in our already approved loan application.  To be more specific they expired our loan offer with not much notice at all.

We didn't receive the loan offer document for signing until the first week of January.  I can still remember clearly the date that was on that document was 29 December 2010.  We've signed all the papers that we need to sign and get the witness required on some of the documents and hand everything back to our broker within a couple of days of receiving the document.

We are told to open an account with the bank for direct debit purposes and the bank needs to ID us.  We are also getting a credit card as part of the package so we need to go to the bank to collect it anyway.  We did all this in the first to second week of January.  We've done everything that the bank has asked us to do.

Not only after a couple of weeks later, our broker rang us in a very very concerned voice.  She told us our loan has expired since the 1st January 2011!!  Imagine the horror look on my face when I hear this news.  The settlement is due on 9 February and we have less than two weeks to come up with the fund to settle the land.

I can't believe that the bank staff failed to notify us that our loan offer has expired when we went in to the branch to open our accounts and collecting our cards.  Furthermore how is it that the loan expired after two days they typed the loan offer.  Even if they did sent it on the 29th or 30th, do they realise that New Year's eve is on the 31st?  and that the document won't reach us until the 3rd or 4th January 2011 due to public holiday imposed nationally!?

It hasn't stop to amaze me how these bank operates really.  I just didn't expect this from one of the major bank in Australia.  It just goes to show how disorganise they are and have the I want your business only attitude.  They keep saying that this was not their fault and it's the law changes by the government that requires them to do so.  What a load of ..... [fill in the blank].  How quickly they are to blame someone else and not own the issue themselves.

So we had to again sign another customer declaration document that states that our circumstances hasn't changed and we have to submit our payslips again along with my wife's tax return document for the last year and this year's forecast.  For your information this would be the 7th sets of payslips that I have to give to the bank.  They really do love our payslips don't they?  Oh and we have to do this by 31 January.  We really only have a couple of days to come up with all the required document, which is not east to get I might add.  Well my payslips are easy as I can just print it off online but my wife's income tax return won't be too easy as she needed to get an accountant to do her tax return forecast.

We did all this and it has now been approved for the second time.  One would think that everything should be fine from here on...  No, it is not.  They still managed to do another stuff up.  One person rang our broker saying that the documents are on their way.  This is the new loan offer document that we had to sign for the second time and this is about a week prior to the settlement day, which is enough time to sign and return the document if that was the case.

Three days later, another person rang our broker saying that they are sending it and we should have the document by tomorrow and that we should return it immediately.  That was on Friday, just a few days before the settlement date, which is on Wednesday.  Our solicitor kept ringing us to ask about the progress of the loan as they need to make an appointment with the bank on the settlement date.  Expiring our loan offer was already testing our patience but this?  This is really pushing it way too far...

To cut long story short, I had to take time off work when my schedule was really full and it's like crazy and got my wife who was working in Chatswood at that time to come all the way to the city so that we can sign the document in front of the bank staff who act as a witness.

We did manage to hand everything back to the office who issue the loan document for us at 4.45pm.  15 minutes before closing time and we were just exhausted after all that running around the city.

In a way, we are relieved to find out that our solicitor was able to make the appointment and settle on the due date.

But given the opportunity again, I think I'll go with another bank as I now have only negative experience with this bank.  Please message me if you like to know the name of this bank and I will happily share it with you.

For now let's just stick to the feeling "We own a piece of Australia"!!

Land Registered

We finally see some progress with the registration of our land.  When we saw the latest update on their website last month, we were told that the land is not going to be registered until mid February.  However to my surprise, I got an email from the conveyancer saying that the land has been registered and that the settlement is due in three weeks time.

We now need to get all the bank document finalized so that we can settle for the land.  All the essential documents have been signed but apparently we also need to open a daily transaction account with the bank, in order for them to have a direct debit access to our account.

On another note, we haven't heard anything back from Metricon with the progress of the design stage.  The last news that I've got from Metricon was the conditions that are required by the developer design panel to which we thought was already solved.

Further to this, along with the letter of registration notice, we also got a notice on the restriction changes to the contract.  In particular there are couple of significant changes.  They are:

• Changes to the restriction of the electricity padmount substation.  The big electricity green box, that was supposed to be located in the corner lot of our block, has been removed.  This is a good change because it means that we don't need to worry about certain fire ratings for the materials anymore.
• Changes to the restriction of Rural Fire Service requirement.  This change will require us to ensure that we are protecting ourselves with sealing the windows and any gaps with aluminium screen so as to prevent ember. in the event of disaster such as fire, entering our house.

Thus upon getting this notice, I have forwarded this to our Customer Service Officer at Metricon.  So far she has only acknowledge that she has received my email.  I guess I need to be a little more proactive and get some info from her as soon as possible.

Unfortunately also, this have passed the tender price period of 240 days that we got.  This would mean that we are now being charged 0.5% of our total contract price.

Oh well, all I can say for now is "Whenever there is a good news, there is almost always a bad news..."

Loan Approved

Our mortgage broker called us earlier today to let us know that our loan has been approved unconditionally by the bank.

To be completely honest, I don't really understand the part where the bank approve the loan conditionally or unconditionally.  The first correspondence that we got from the bank said that we were approved conditionally and provided that we can satisfy their list of requirements.




So we went and get all that are needed such as:

• The valuation of our current house
• The rental valuation of our current house
• The lease agreement of our current house
• A letter from my accountant

There was also a bunch of other things but our mortgage broker has taken care of it, which puzzles me even more??

Anyway I'm just glad that our loan application for both the land and the construction have been approved.  At least I know that I will have some money to pay for the house.  Someone once said to me, getting the loan is the easy part but paying it off is the difficult part... I couldn't agree more...

However for every good news, there is almost always a bad news.  I checked the status on our land registration yesterday only to discover that it has been delayed for another two months.

We were initially hoping that by this time that we have already settled on our land.  That was the scheduled date when we bought it.  Then it was delayed until January.  However the latest update said otherwise and we have to wait until February.

Looks like we have more waiting game and biting our nails while we're at it.

Bank Valuation

Our loan broker has just gave some news about our land valuation.  The independent valuer of the bank has valued our land $5,000 more than the purchase price!

I guess we have made the right decision :)

Gain $5,000 from the land in just 4 months without doing anything at all.