My first landscape job!

Ok so I'm not very good at gardening or anything to do with backyard, front yard, plants or anything that relates to gardening.  As a matter of fact, I've tried to look after an indoor type but even that I failed miserably. But hey, everyone need to start somewhere right?

So this is my first time to actually do a gardening job.  I have done some garden maintenance in the past but it's only limited to lawn mowing and watering the plants.

Anyway on with the topic.

As part of our contract agreement with Metricon, we need to clear our land of any obstacles that might hinder the construction process.  That includes trees, debris, long grass, rubish, etc.  I think in one of my entires, I've mentioned about a tree that is impeding the construction of the driveway that connects our driveway to the street.

In the council submission that Metricon provided, it was proposed that the tree was to be repositioned by ourselves.  So I did just that last Sunday 10 April, with the help from a friend of course.  Here are some picture evidence of my effort:

I am feeling quite proud of myself that I just moved a tree and did my first landscape job and was still standing when I left it.  However upon visiting our land again yesterday, I discovered that the tree that I moved last Sunday had fallen to the ground.  Apparently I accidently cut off the roots of the tree during my attempt to dug it out.  So with the strong wind conditions for the past week or so, the tree that I just moved will not stand a chance against the harsh environment.  I was told that the tree will die as a result of that.

I've also noticed that there is a block across from us that the council tree has been completely removed from where it used to be!  They must've fall under the same situation that we are in.  I didn't bother trying to plant the tree again as the wind conditions hasn't changed much and also I didn't bring my tools anyway.  Might do more work on it later during the break.

I thought to myself that it was too good to be true that I can gardening on my own.  However I will keep trying and learning.  This is fun!  Also I wanted the house and it's surrounding to look nice when we move in.  I learned that a good landscape has also it's benefits.  Not only it will add some tranquility to your lifestyle but can also add more value to your home.  Check out this site if you like to find out more.

Council Approval

After nearly 60 days of waiting, biting nails and getting frustrated at the council for taking their time with our document. we finally received our approval document on this day.  To be exact the time taken for the council to send our development approval to us was 57 days or 1 month and 29 days.  But hey, who's counting? :)

I might add that on this day happened to be the April's fool day also.  Talking about getting a present on this day, makes me think twice whether this is actually happening.

Nevertheless we got our council approval document via our CSO at Metricon today and the hard copy is on it's way via the mail.

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.

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.

Why The Ponds?

Moving to The Ponds will have a big impact in our day to day lives.  This would mainly concern in getting to work on time as well getting my son ready to go to his child care center in the city.  Oh, I haven't said that I'm working in the Sydney city have I?  Well I am working in the city and to get to work from where we currently live, it would take about 20 minutes express train ride and if we want to talk about door to door it'll be pretty much half an hour on average.  We are leaving in the inner west suburbs of Sydney called Ashfield and we don't live to far away from the station.

So why am I still considering to move to The Ponds?  It's really none other the following reasons:

As previously mentioned, my little family is now, although slowly, growing and soon enough we will need a bigger space for them.  The requirement there is none other than a house.

I also wanted an area where we can blend in and to be ourselves, friendly environment but yet sustainable.  A quiet area but not too quiet.  Some parkland, if possible, so we don't have to travel far away for family exercise session.  Lastly somewhere close to school.

Funnily enough for a suburb that previously I haven't even heard of, The Ponds tick all of the boxes and give something more as well.  From our research, most of the people purchasing or beginning a new life at The Ponds are actually in our age group so that's really a big plus for us, as we will have some people already that we can connect to.   I am really a big fan about having a social life and getting involve in a community where everyone can gather and share common interests together :)

In relation to the proximity of The Ponds, after making few trips to The Ponds and back, we didn't feel that it's far at all. (I can even get there with my eyes closed now :)).  So I guess it's a matter of how quickly we can adapt to our new life at The Ponds.

Masterplan of the The Ponds

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