Over the weekend we went looking at display homes at St Clair in Woodville where we had two homes in particular that we were interested in looking at, our other goal was to stay away from the homes on the "Expensive" side of the street and stick to what was within our budget.
The first home that I wanted to look at was a Weeks Peacock home, The Sheridan:
We loved the floor plan and the modern frontage ... but the price tag was a bit out of our price range. For the most basic build they were asking $290,000 ... and that is far more than we where willing to pay!
The next stop was Metricon, we like their modern style for the interior and the open style living areas plus they have a huge range of floor plans especially for narrow blocks plus their pricing for a standard build looked to be more in line with what we where after.
After looking through their St Clair display home and after having a chat with one of the sales consultants there we decided to head out to Blakeview to have a look at the Cedar, which would fit on our block and also be close to our initial price range.
We actually really liked this design, the floor plan had a good feel for space and while it is larger than we had originally planned it would certainly suit us for years to come. The standard price for this was $263,000 so it is over our original budget of the $250,000 and there would be a few things that we'd like to upgrade to make the most out of the home. But luckily for us Metricon have a special going where if you pay an additional $4,000 you get $20,000 of upgrades or you pay $8,000 for $40,000 on upgrades. So we left there feeling positive that this would be a good plan to start with.
Then we got home and started number crunching ... that was depressing!
After some soul searching and a some brutal honesty we decided that in order to have a life we should stick to a budget of $200,000 going no higher than $210,000! And with that in mind we dropped the idea of going two storey and had a look at their single storey plans ... things got even more depressing for awhile there as we went through plan after plan in the SA selections without much luck. Then we came across the Murchison in the Victorian section and it is pretty close to perfect.
The best part is that the standard build is around the $150,000 mark and we still get to take advantage of the special offer, up to $20,000, and we still have $50,000 to jazz it up. So that made us much more positive!
It was an emotional roller coaster of a night that is for sure!
So the Monday night we made a time to have a look through the Selection Centre so we could see what came standard, what would need to be upgraded and to ask if it is possible to do that design even through it's not in the SA floor plan selections. We where really impressed with what they had to offer ... so now we are just waiting to hear back with a rough estimate on costs and also if that plan is possible here.
So fingers crossed looks as though things are turning around! Finally!
We started this process earlier last month so now I'm very excited to see how your process is similar/differs to ours - but we got a house and land package with a design already pre-approved so we dont have as much say as you guys but about the same budget :)
ReplyDeleteAwesome! It's a lot of fun and at least with a house and land package you dont need to worry about going through council! Who are you building with??
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