Cut... Fill... Action!!

Or that was suppose to be Lights... Camera... Action!  Ok, I don't really care anymore.  I got a call on Friday morning from my Site Supervisor, introducing himself and said that he will supervise the project until it is handed over to us.  He will also give us an update as to the progress of the build.

The first update he gave me was that he got some surveyor at our block doing some peg as we speak on the phone.  They will then proceed to do the piering on Monday or Tuesday.  By next Friday we should be getting our slab poured!!

I was going to put some post on Friday but the blogger was down for maintenance.  I guess it works out well as this is the surprise that I got when I went to the land today.

(I am still in shock that this is really happening?!?!)


A leveled block of land!!!!  Our land that is *insert smiley face here*

From the front, it looks higher from the street

Actually they raise the entire block.

I guess today is the official start day of my weekly drive and visit!  My camera is also at the ready.  Did I say that I also enjoy photography? :)

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"!!

Council Submission

We're in council!!!!

After a long and anxious wait, I finally got the news that our plan has been submitted to the council for approval. The news on about our plan submission did not come from Metricon.  I used a site called Planning Alerts that tells you nearby development application submission around your address.  You can also create an email alert that notifies you if any development application has been submitted on any given day.  You can even view the detailed information about the development by clicking the URL link and it will direct you to the related council where the development application has been submitted.

I used an address nearby our block of land and I'd like to thank a particular someone in The Ponds Boulevard whose address I used so that I can subscribe to these alerts notification.

This is how I learned that our plan has been submitted to the council.  Metricon did notify us about the progress or about the submission, however it is not until four days later.

Up to this stage, we have been quite busy getting the bank loan organised, which has caused us a lot of dramas, and the settlement date of our land is also just around the corner.  It is less than a week now to own our block of land!

I also received a call from Metricon - Studio M to arrange a time for us to go for our internal color appointment!

It really feels like we just jumped a few steps in our building journey...  Hopefully it is not long until we actually start the building process.

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.

Developer Design Conditions

We hoped for an easy approval when submitting our plan to the developer design panel.  However they came back with two conditions that we need to comply so as to maintain the standard of the covenant I guess.  

When Metricon rang me earlier today I thought that there was something wrong with the landscape plan.  This was not the case though.  The conditions states that we needed to comply with the privacy requirements and they are:

1. Provide clear comfort glazing to the kitchen feature window, that is the long horizontal window behind the cooker (see the image on the right), and the window of the dining room.  
2. Reduce the height of the window in the first floor leisure room.

We had the option to do some shading device or awning at the completion of the build but we went with the comfort glazing option as we were advised that we can hardly see it anyway.  On top of that, I don't think that I will want to do the awning as it may look weird with the design of the house.

I have no problem with reducing the height of the window as I quite like the look and effect at the Metricon display house at The Ponds anyway.

Fortunately there were the only two that we need to discuss and agree on and we didn't have to pay any extra charge, which is a good thing nowadays.  I guess we can consider ourselves approved!! yay!

On another positive note, we were advised today by our real estate agent that we got a prospective tenant wanting to lease our unit.  They are a couple with 14 months old baby with good reference and job, as advised by the real estate agent.  More importantly, they are willing to pay the rental price that we asked for.  So we agreed to accept their application to lease our place.

We are quite happy that everything is progressing along as planned but at the same time we are also sad to learn that we are going to move from a place that we have made and called home for the last 5-6 years.  This is the place where our two children first set their little foot and play their heart out.  But nevertheless our little family is also growing and we need to move on to a bigger place to raise them.

This is a very special place for us and we had lots of memories here.  We intend to keep our two storey with two bedroom unit as much as we can.  Obviously we need to be honest with ourselves and sell the place as soon as we see some indications that we will be in financial trouble by keeping it.

This Christmas will be the last Christmas that we will celebrate in our little place as our prospective tenant will be moving in on 12 January 2011.  As for ourselves, we are moving back to the parents' place until the house is ready.

Land Construction Complete

I checked the status update of our land registration from the website and I saw that the construction has been completed on the 5 November 2010.  Unfortunately though we went away on our holiday and did not have the time to visit our land.

It's amazing to see the difference when we first set foot on Waterfall block about 6 months ago .  It's not like we only visited the land a couple of times.  Over the 6 months period we have visited a number of times but it just feels different.  A noticeable difference.

This is what it looks like 6 months ago:

This is what it looks like today (taken from almost at the same spot as the previous):

One thing that we did notice is that the big green electricity box that is situated on our neighboring block is not there.  Not that we are complaining of course.  We think that it is great that the box wasn't there.  That would only mean the restriction at the front yard of our block no longer applies.  YAY!!!  No more headaches trying to find a material with a certain fire rating!

When we visited our block, we met our first neighbors.  The couple own the land just right behind us.  I have a feeling that we are going to have some very nice people living around us.

Landscape Plan

To get the developer approval as well as Blacktown Council, we needed to submit our development application along with the landscape plan.  Well other than the landscape plan, I don't think that the developer needed to see the development application.  Only the council do, however in order to progress to development application, we need to get by this first.

We hired a professional service, recommended by Metricon, to come up with our landscape design and plan.  The company is called Eco Design and according to The Ponds Design Panel, they are one of the company that have successfully submitted a landscape plan that comply to the covenant rules. There were actually two companies that Metricon had recommend but we chose to go with Eco Design.  We have heard and talked to them before earlier in the year in one of the Home Show annual exhibition in Darling Harbour held between April and May.  We'll definitely be making our way back to the exhibition next year to search for some home improvement ideas once it is built.  Plus they have some nice give away at the show some times.

We visited their stand and quite impressed with their design.  There were obviously some other landscaper within the exhibition but in terms of price, Eco Design was one of the reasonable one.  So when they were recommended to us plus they are also one of the company that have worked with The Ponds design panel, we didn't hesitate to acquire their services and it was well worth it.

This is quite a big move for us, having to move from a two bedroom unit to a four bedroom house (potentially five bedroom if we rearrange the floor plan).  In all these years as a family, we haven't had to do any gardening type of work, let alone lawn mowing.  Thus we wanted a garden that is easy to maintain and waterwise.

I've told our landscape consultant that I am a big fan of modern Japanese themed garden.  But I think that some of the 'Japanese' like plant that we have chosen will break our rules of easy maintenance.  Some of the other plans that we chose were natives and recommended by The Ponds design panel.

Judging by the very long list of the plant schedule, it would appear that it's going to cost us a fortune!

Some plants that were chosen for us and some that we chose ourselves:

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.

Update about something... at least...

It's been a while since I last updated this blog and I think it's about time to do so...

What a month it has been...  we have been pretty busy with our little family lately that we have neglected going over to The Ponds or even doing some project home thinking!  That's very naughty of us....

Yesterday we took our kids out to watch the Disney on Ice show at the Acer Arena - Olympic park.  We had a wonderful time and our son really loves them!  (Our little girl probably don't understand what was going on as she just turned 1 last Thursday!)  After the show the skaters (still with their costume on of course) hang out on the edge and call out for the kids to come over.  As we were sitting quite close to the ice rink, I took our son to go over the ice rink to shake their hand.  Well not all of them but at least he got to shake hand with Mickey Mouse!!

On the way back to our car we asked him if he enjoyed the show and he said yes.  We also asked him who was his favorite character; and he answered Mickey Mouse! hahahaha... kids are just so amazing :)  We are very happy to see that our kids actually enjoyed the show.... and to see them happy means a lot to us :)

Anyway to update what is happening with our project home...

In my very first post, I've written about how our home purchase at Auburn was a total failure and we instructed our conveyancer to cancel the contract.  As we have waited for more than 12 months we are able to cancel the contract without penalties.  We received an update from our conveyancer last week that the receivers and managers of the property has received our instructions and therefore have cancelled the contract as per our request.  We are now waiting for our deposit to be refunded to us.  Hopefully this doesn't take a full month again.  That's one of the good news...

The bad news is nothing has happened in our block of land.  No construction progress update or whatsoever.  Well it has been raining a lot for the last couple of weeks so they probably delay the work on our block again... This would mean that Metricon is not able to send site engineers to inspect the block in order to determine our site costs will be.

We got a call today from our SC saying that Metricon would like to fast track the tender process for us.  As we are not able to give them an update about our block of land, he wanted us to get a contour diagram plan that show the rise/fall of the land.  He said that by getting this, Metricon would take the risk and work of the contour plan to determine our site costs and if there is anything extra, Metricon will bear the cost... How very generous of them!!  Thank you!! :)

So I rang The Ponds office and asked them to provide me with a contour diagram for our block that I can send to our SC.  Hopefully that would speed up our tender presentation and we get to select colours and all the other appointments that we need to do.

A bad news that is followed by a good news can't be that bad I guess.... Another exciting moment of our lives!! :)

Mission Impossible: Up Close and Personal

Sneaking in...

Thanks to the info that we got from the people at HomeOne forum, we discovered that we can actually sneaked in all the way to our land! How cool is that!

After making sure that the rain has stopped (it has been raining for the whole week!) or at least no rain while we were on the mission :). We managed to walk all the way and took some photos of our to be land! :)

Taken from Meander Crescent overlooking Waterfall 9 and Spring Street Looks like they have started putting in the kerb and gutter

Taken from the corner of Spring St and Copper St At least they started to build the road on this street

Taken from Copper St.

Making our way to our land

Walked pass a manhole and thought that 

"Would this be the manhole on the back of our land will look like?"

This is a series of photos taken with different angles and view that we thought where our block of land supposed to be. 

As you can see there is still a puddle of water from the rain on that block.  I was advised by Landcom that the construction was stopped for the whole week due to the rain.  This is bad news for us because it would mean that Metricon won't be able to send their site surveyor to do the soil test and determine our site costs. :(

Oh well, what some rainy days we had here....

Mission accomplished.... over and out...

Contract Land Exchanged

I went to meet our conveyancer on the 25th May 2010 with signed Contract of Purchase paper from Landcom.  Both my wife and I are very excited with the future that lies ahead of us.

We made only a minor change to our contract.  That is instead of giving us 14 days notice before the land is registered and we need to settle, our conveyancer asked for 21 days of notice and Landcom agreed!

I paid our 5% deposit of purchase price and paid a little part of the conveyancer fee on that day.

On 26th May, I got a call from our conveyancer confirming that the contract has been exchanged.

Another step to owning our dream home!

This is my house!!!

On this day, we finally decided that we are going to put some deposit money as well as signing our lives away with Metricon to build our dream home.

It was the Tribeca 36 with Metro facade that we are going with.

The House

The Floor Plan

We made our appointment with one of Metricon's sales consultant at Kellyville Ridge display center but we were late getting there as my son had a stomach bug and was throwing up during the trip.

After nearly 1 hour late for our appointment, we finally arrived.  We verified all the standard inclusion list again; did a walkthrough of the house as we didn't do that the first time; and finally we also wanted to confirm that we are getting an extension to our tender expiry period as our land is not going to be registered until December 2010.

Our sales consultant made a call to his manager to confirm the availability of the manager sale and confirmed that we'll definitely secure our tender price for 240 days.  The default tender expiry period is 150 days and that will only get us until October of this year in which it will not work for us.  So having 240 days for the tender expiry days will help us quite a lot as Metricon charges 0.5% of the total value of contract price per month if we don't go into construction within 150 days.

Some may think, why did we sign the request for tender on this day and not wait until at least our land is registered?  Well the answer is, Metricon will have their prices increased by at least $10k on the Monday 24th May.  By putting in the deposit on this day, it will guarantee us today's price and not having to deal with the price increase.  Also one of their promotion package which is called the Reflection Package, and this package will get us most of the stuff that we wanted, was going to finish at the end of the month.  The promotion was the main factor that we decided to sign up on this day really.

Maybe they tricked us into it or it could probably be a sales pitch to put some pressure on us.  Having said that and knowing the facts, at the end of the day, we were quite happy with our decision. :)

One step closer to owning a brand new home!

House House House... - The Dream Home

So now that we know that we are going to get a double storey house, the question is which one?

After countless number of trips to The Ponds builder display village and Homeworld that seemed like to go on forever, we were finally able to shortlist a number of house design that we like.

1.  Metricon: Riva 34 - Metro Facade
The design gives a lot of private open space area and it covers only about 28% of the total area.  We didn't really like the facade of the house but, in general principle, it's really the floor plan that we really liked.  From what we can see from the geosite image, it would appear that the house won't go anywhere near the manholes as well.

We were a bit disappointed when we discovered that the rumpus room at the back of the house that is on display at their Kellyville Ridge center was actually an upgrade.  In order to "add" that room it will cost us around $25k.

Our sales consultant was very patient with us throughout the questioning session :).

2.  AV Jennings: Atrium 285 - Capri Facade
I must say that the house that is on display at The Ponds builder village is really nice and a very lovely home.  The consultant also advised us that the display home was full of upgrades in it.  The only concern I have about Atrium was that the house was originally design for a corner block.  So if we wanted this house, we'll need to make some modifications such as moving the entrance to the study room whilst also extending the study room so that we can actually have one.

Comparing to the Riva from Metricon, we like the facade of Atrium better.  It feels more homey.  However there will be extra costs depending on which facade that we choose.  The only problem in this is we will not choose the traditional facade.

The price for the standard range would also fit our budget perfectly and way under.



3.  Metricon: Tribeca 36 - Metro Facade
This comes in at the very last minute.  After spending most part of the day with one of Metricon's sales consultant, we thought that we have what we have come  for and all of the informations that we need to make our decision.  However we can't help but to have a last sneak peek at the Tribeca.

Maybe it's because we have spent most of the days going through all of the display house at Metricon in great details that we were finally able to spot that the Tribeca isn't very much different to the Riva.  I mean it has the same elements of floor plan but Tribeca have an extra study room and rumpus room.  All others are pretty much the same.

So we made an inquiry about the price for Tribeca 36 (the smaller version from the display center) with Metro facade and the difference was the cost of building the rumpus room for the Riva.

Tribeca 40 - Coastal Facade on display at Metricon display centre at The Ponds

Which house did we choose? Based on the above, it is not a secret that we will be going for the Tribeca 36 with Metro facade.  We did seriously consider of going with AV Jennings with their Atrium 285 design and also Metricon was a bit pricey and we will be stretching our budget.  However at the end of the day, after considering factors such as the standard inclusion list, promotion package and the quality of all the wares that we are going to get, it was Metricon's that we like the best.

And there it is, after a good 3 months of researching and looking at the display centers, we finally found our dream home...

Home and Builder Selection

Finding a house that can work on our block of land is not at all an easy task!!  We are quite restricted in the usage of the area and we also have to comply with The Ponds design guideline.  This is another challenging journey itself.  Here's how the story goes.

Upon purchasing the block of land, my wife and I were still quite puzzled as to what we are going to do next.  Although the answer is clearly "find a builder and get them to build a house on that land" but there are some constraints.  This would be things such as financials, the house, the plan and most importantly what do we prefer?  As this is our first time building experience, we have absolutely no idea what to expect and what kind of house we are looking for.

In the hype of my excitement in acquiring a block of land, we initially wanted a house that is big as possible for our two little kids to play around and we also thought it would be a good investment for us in the future.  So a double storey house would seem like a perfect design to suit our needs.

My excitement was quickly dismissed when I was told that we will most likely going for a single storey house design so that we may be able to save some funds if we wanted to improve the house later.  I was utterly devastated but that is the logical explanation and it is true.  From what we have heard, building a house can be quite costly and there is always something in the end that may catch us off guard so we may need the extra cash.  After all, this is our first building experience...

So the house hunting begins...

With that in mind, over the few weeks after acquiring the land, we made few trips to The Ponds and Homeworld in order to look for a house design that may suit our lifestyle and needs.  Some of the following are the main factor in our consideration (and it is very basic!! :)):

• Big enough for the children to play
• Not too big of a backyard
• Double Garage
• Minimum of 4 bedrooms
• Minimum of 2 bathrooms
• A study room

This is where the problem begin!  After talking to and a very lengthy discussions with a few builders at The Ponds and Homeworld, they all have nearly the same opinion as well as issue in fitting a house to our block of land.  This is due to the restrictions and easements on the back of our land, i.e. the manholes.  

A single storey house would be difficult to fit in without having to redesign the floor plan so that it avoids the manholes.  Conceptually, it could work and I've seen some builders that redesign their floor plan to work on our block of land.  However it's the end results is what we don't like.  We are quite fussy in that sense :P.

A double storey house design would work better for our block as majority avoids the restrictions and easements altogether.  It is also better as it will make better use of the space on that land.  

So it looks like, again, back to where we started.  What are we going to do with this piece of land?  

We thought about letting it go and lose our holding deposit money of $300 and wait for another land release that has minimum, if not, no restrictions on it.  The difficulties in that idea is getting to The Ponds sales office in time so that we can have some selections on the piece land itself.  Although the queue system at the sales office has changed dramatically, however both of us are working and considering the distance that we need to travel to get there, we won't make it on time.

We also thought about settling on the land and then sell it later after a couple of years.  However this idea would still incur some maintenance fee on our side.  In this case we would settle for an established house instead and at least we don't have to worry about building experience and the headache associated with it.

The answer to this may look very simple and easy enough but it was very difficult for us to make that leap forward.  Then after few family discussions and meetings, we are back to our original ideas, decided to trust everything that we had and courageously embracing our dreams (and hope that we are not being stupid in this).  So another hunting begins for a DOUBLE STOREY house :).  

Some of the builders that we looked at include:

Lili Homes

Eden Brae

Jandson Homes

AV Jennings

Metricon

AllCastle Homes

Masterton

There is some more builders that we saw that I haven't include here but it was these builders that we showed our contour diagram and discussed about their house design.

About the Land

Where is this land?  It is at The Ponds, Sydney newest suburb in the North West region.


As mentioned in my previous post, we got the last block of land for sale out of the 21 new land releases that day.  We did wonder why wasn't this one sold already as it wasn't a corner block.  As I was saying there were still a group of people left in the sales office when we walked in and one of the group who was in front of us asking about the block that was still available for sale (which was soon to be ours :)).

We had a look at the contour diagram / development plan and  I believe it was the restrictions on the land itself that probably puts people off from buying it.  The land comes with, let's just say, a few issues.

At the frontage side, there is a restriction on the use of the left hand side.  This is due to an electricity substation box located on the neighboring block.  Although this box is not located on our land itself, however we still need to comply with the usage of this area.  We were advised that it is still possible to build on this area but it will need to have different materials that has a certain fire rating or in other words, fire retardant material.

On the back of this land, there is couple of issues:

1.  An underground sewer line run through the back.  This is still fine as the design guideline states that for a single storey house we need to have a 4.5m setback and 5m for a double storey.  Looking at the diagram, it would seem that we will miss this completely.  However this would mean that we can't build a pool on this block at all.  Not that we are planning to have one anyway but nevertheless, within our contract of purchase it says that we can't build a pool on the back of this land. lol.  (news flash Landcom, you ain't gonna see anyone, if not rarely, build a pool at the front of the house.... duhh!)

2.  Whilst we don't mind about having a pool-less block, the sewer line itself present another issue.  The line had a couple of turns through the side of the land and out, rendering it to have two maintenance holes on top of it.  This is due to the regulations of Sydney Water that on every turn corner of the sewer, a manhole must be created.  We were told if Sydney Water was to ever need to access the hole, they will come from the side of the house.  I'm not exactly sure how often they would need access to the sewer.  I checked with a few people that I know that has the same kind of problem and they said for as long as they can remember... never.  We're kind of relieved to hear that to be honest.  But the problem still remains, a friend of ours, who also works as a salesman in a home building company, advised us that we can't build too close to the manholes.  If we were going to utilise the area, it needs to be 2m away from the edge of the manhole.

Well in summary, I think the issues above can be summed up into one single problem: more money for our site costs :(.  I just hoped that it won't blow our budget when we start building.

Oh well, I guess that although we can dream but life is also full of challenges.  We decided to accept the land as it is and work around the issues so that we can build a house that we can call "home".

Below are some pictures overlooking our land on the horizon.  Practically there is no road leading there from the sales office just yet but hopefully sometime in the future, there will be.

Future Waterfall area on the horizonTaken from the fence behind the Sales Office

One of the future main road of The Ponds