Signed the contracts
Posted by | Posted in General | Posted on 16-04-2010
Just a quick note to say that Maria and I have signed our contract with Burbank to build our Ascent 2500 on our plot of land. After the signing of the contract, Gianni (Burbank rep) told us that Burbank will call for the Edge appointment either tomorrow (Friday) or Monday, but on the way home from Altona they called us to book a time in. So next Wednesday we will be at the Edge to pick our colours and speak to our electrical guys etc.
Can’t wait! The turnaround time from Burbank has been amazing — we were told months ago that it’ll take weeks for everything to be ready to the point of signing, yet this has taken only about 4 weeks all up.
Hi, we had our colour appointment at Edge yesterday for our Ascent. We went for a walk around at the edge (about 45 mins) before we went for the final appointment to get an idea what choices are available for us. I highly recommend it. For example there;s quite a choice for for bricks so choosing without seeing a house built by it, its hard to decide. We went to Austral bricks and they gave us a few addresses that were built using the bricks.
Hi Sope,
Thanks for your comment, it’s quite intriguing. I have already gone to Australbrick (in Thomastown) and had a look at their brick range – fell in love with the Canterbury. When we went to sign the contracts at Burbank HQ, the contract administrator was sure that Burbank use Boral bricks, but weren’t sure if they use Australbrick as well. I hope they do, as I had a look at the Boral bricks earlier today and couldn’t really find one that matches or is better than the Canterbury look and style.
Is it possible if you could confirm for me whether Burbank use Australbrick as well?
Thanks!
Yes they do have Australl. We chose Austral La Trobe. Only thing is the whole range from the manufacturer is not available at Burbank. can’t remember for certain if cantebury is there. Since you’re at Aurora like us I assume that you can choose upto category 3 bricks. Checked out the photos we took at edge when we went for the walk through, since I’m the one who I haven’t take I haven’t taken everything :-( So can’t confirm that cantebury was in the range.
Thanks for your quick reply Sope! I’m glad to hear that Australbrick is available at The Edge. Canterbury is quite a popular brick according to Australbrick so here’s hoping it is available. I am aware that Aurora offers category 3 bricks, but I was under the impression that you can upgrade them for a price – is this still the case at the Edge? Maria and I are willing to pay the price to upgrade our bricks to whatever category the Canterbury is (if they offer the brick), we love it that much!
May I ask whxh stage in Aurora you are in?
Thanks for your valuable information, it’s great to know these things before going in for our appointment. You’ve been a great help!
Sure if you like Cantebury that much you should go for it. Yeap you can upgrade the brick to a higher category at the Edge. In fact you can upgrade any thing at the Edge.
We are in stage 16 at Aurora.
When I saw your blog last week I thought it was a nice coincidence coz you both have done lot of things very similar to what we have done. Including excel work sheets as well as my husband being a software engineer. :-)
Hi George,
I stumbled across your blog yesterday and I’m so glad I found it! We are building in Stage 16 of Aurora and wanted to see what the progress will be like with land settlement and with the build.
I noticed on your post that your Burbank rep is name Gianni- is he at the Altona office? You mentioned that you received a call to make your Edge appt just after you had left the Burbank office. We are dealing with a guy from the Aurora Burbank office and progress has been slow. We signed on the weekend to agree that Burbank will build on our block of land but i was told by the guy from Burbank that the Edge will contact us in 2-3 weeks to organise an appt.
I’m confused. How can there be such a time difference between making The Edge appts?
Thanks.
Hi Marleena,
Thanks for reading my blog – I’m glad that you find it interesting. To answer your questions – yes Gianni (our Burbank contracts rep) is based in Altona, and this is where we signed our contract. He said to us that an appointment for the Edge would be made in maybe 2 weeks from the date of signing the contract, which was fine by us.
We had a clause in our VicUrban contract for time limits surrounding our financing situation, and that time would have ran out sometime this week unless we sign a builders contract and have unconditional approval. No doubt this would’ve accelerated things somewhat on Burbank’s end – we notified the sales office in Aurora about our situation and they said that they will do whatever they can to help get it over the line. Our main goal that day was to make sure that this clause was fulfilled – an appointment at the Edge wasn’t required in our goal, so whatever time they were available would’ve been fine with us. It was just a bonus that they called the very same day – we didn’t expect this at all. Of course, the earlier the better!
I would say that the standard period of time between contract signing and Edge appointment would be 2-3 weeks, as you had been informed by your contracts rep. I wouldn’t be concerned if I haven’t received a call within this time period.
There is still a few weeks after your land is titled and settled before Burbank (or any other builder for that matter) can build on your land. Stuff like building permits need to be applied for and received, etc. The fact that there’s so many links in the chain means that there will always be delays, large and small, when it comes to a big project like building a house.
Hope this has helped you – it’s the first time we’re building too (in fact owning anything more expensive than a car!) so we’re trying to figure it all out ourselves too. Good luck and hope you have a worry-free build! Feel free to comment further in the coming weeks and months as I update this blog with more details as I get them. Our Edge appointment is actually tomorrow (!!!) so I’ll be updating this blog with another post soon after that.
This comment has been edited with updated information.
We were just informed by our conveyancer (as adviced by VicUrban)that the land registration for stage 16 may take place end of May which would mean the settlement would be within the 30 days from registration. When we signed up the contract in Jan VicUrban was forecasting that the settlement would happen around August. That means the drama’s going to start soon.
Thanks for the update Sope. We haven’t been informed ourselves when our Stage 15 lot will settle yet. However, I spied in a page near the back of the Burbank contract that we signed that it will settle by 30 May, maybe they’re doing Stage 15 and 16 together? I think they did this with Stages 13 and 14.