I hadn't heard anything from our settlement agent since we got formal approval and being in the mind set I just described, I wasn't too concerned. A couple of days before settlement was due, I called the settlement agent just to check that everything was on track. They informed me "Oh, umm, no, we haven't even got the FHOG yet, no it won't be happening this week". Over the following few weeks we had many extensions on the settlement date and I also wrote a letter to Keystart.
In the letter to Keystart, I outlined the dates of major occurrences, such as application date, pre-approval, formal approval, settlement and the time frames between each. I also told them if settlement didn't take place in the next week we'd be going to the Minister for Commerce. I forwarded a copy to our local member for parliament, Judy Moylan. The following week we settled.
In total we settled a bit over 7 weeks after formal approval. One of the people I spoke to at Keystart mentioned that 6 weeks was the longest some of the files had been waiting for settlement, so I'm not sure if my letter actually achieved anything or if it was just a coincidence.
So anyway, on Tuesday the 29th of September, our block settled, so we now own land. Ash and I went down to the block, just to see if it looked different now that we owned it or something I guess :P. It just so happened that Andrew, the sales guy for Waterhall, was there, which was strange because he isn't usually on Tuesdays. Anyway, we went and said hi, and he asked if we wanted a SOLD sticker, which of course we did. We went to the block and put the sticker on, finally some change in the block.
The following day we sent the notification of settlement to our builder who told us that construction should begin in about 2-3 weeks, which today is less than 1-2 weeks. Apparently we will receive a letter letting us know when construction will commence and we also will meet the site manager who will then be our new contact person.
Also, due to Ash working at Midland Brick, we get a bit more of an insight into things. Our bricks are Handmade Sandalford and because they have about 5 or 6 different shades of bricks, each batch is slightly different(Apparently it's down to the clay that's used and I suppose some other factors which are uncontrollable). The normal procedure is that when you're building a house with these bricks, you go down to the yard and there are a couple of batches of bricks that you can choose from, so if there is a batch you don't like, you're not stuck with them. When the bricks are ready, photos are taken of them, and Ash gets the photos for work, so we've seen the current batches and they're pretty much spot on to the catalogue versions. We're really hoping we can go and choose the bricks from these batch's because they're exactly the way we like them. Ash is going to find out today if we can choose them yet. We'll actually get to see part of our house!
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Well, that was a bit of a surprise. I wrote that blog entry before going to the block with Ash to get a picture of the block with the sold sticker. When we got to the block we discovered our block has been excavated and has the metal framework for the slab ready to go. Quite a shock considering we weren't expecting to even hear from RedInk for another week or two, never mind actually have construction begin.
So I never got a picture of the block in it's untouched state with the sold sticker, but I'm willing to live with that seeing as construction has started early. Here are some photos:
I've also updated the photo of our house in the side bar at the right. That's it for now, but hopefully we'll have a lot more to update from now on!
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