Maria swung by the lot after work today and discovered that Burbank has given us a couple of presents – we now officially have electricity connection to the lot, and an outdoor loo and rubbish cage has been left on the lot as well.
I wonder when we will get temporary fencing?
Houston, we have site scrape! I swung past the lot after work and was pleasantly surprised to see that we have been scraped, 1-2 days earlier than stated (our SS said Tuesday or Wednesday). I know you all love some pictures, so here goes.
I swung past the block of land after work today and discovered that we now have taps! Also, someone dumped concrete on our land. I don’t know who it was, or why. Does anyone know if I should be concerned about this and / or report it?
The bank finally provided the correct documentation that Burbank needed to proceed our file on to onsite – so we’re at the Base stage in MyLogin now!
Now that all the paperwork has been completed, the real fun starts. The weather here in Melbourne has been absolutely miserable over the past 5-6 months now – the sun tries so hard to shine through and dry up all the soppy and mushy ground, but the clouds come in and bully it out of sight, bringing with it rain and misery. I’m really over this crummy weather.
Before Burbank starts on our lot, we have to receive a “site start letter” first. I don’t know too much about what this letter entails, but from what I hear it should include the date that they’re going to start doing a site scrape, usually a couple of weeks after the letter has been sent. And from what I hear, it takes about 2 weeks that the letter gets sent in the first place, so hopefully this time next month we will have a site scrape.
We had a look at the estate last weekend and all the site scrapes that had recently been made have all turned into swimming pools. Can you see why I hate this weather now? ;)
Burbank MyLogin has been updated, the home screen has heaps more items listed as pending now, and other information such as supervisor name have also been updated. One annoying thing about MyLogin is that it relies on Microsoft Silverlight, and a message appears when you don’t have it installed (prompting you to install it yourself). Unfortunately on my Mac, despite having Silverlight installed, this message to install it keeps popping up, so I can’t access any of the images that they may have posted (or may post in future). If anyone has a fix for this, please let me know in the comments.
Another quick post to let you all know that we have received final drawings and have signed, scanned and sent back to our contract liaison at Burbank. Happy times!
The bank on the other hand, has gotten into their heads that they have already given us a letter of offer for unconditional approval to start building. What they fail to understand though that the letter of approval states only enough funds to pay off the land, and not the build of the house. This is supposed to be an “extension” kind of thing once it was settled as to how much the cost of building the house with Burbank will come to. So I guess that means more phone calls on Monday.
With our finances, we are more than capable of getting the loan for the full amount; it just seems a piece of paper stating so is just too hard for the bank to produce. They’re the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle, and I predicted this was going to happen even before we paid our deposit for our land purchase. Maybe I should consult my crystal ball to try and forsee what other delays we’ll be in for in the future!
We received our building permit today. Our land developers have completed their approval process, but I am still waiting on a receipt for the invoice we paid to them to have the extra network and RF ports in our house.
All that’s required now is for us to sign the final drawings, get the unconditional approval from the bank for the final amount and receive our site start letter and then the real fun begins!
We finally got developer approval!
For those playing at home, we came across another hurdle to overcome in the paperwork precluding the construction of our house. Burbank had a different idea on where RF and data points (and how many) were allowed throughout the house, to which the land developer at the time for developer approval buffed that back saying that there is a standard layout of what’s included “in the price” when it came to optic fibre connectivity, and if the owners (us) wanted extra then we have to foot the bill.
The extra money wasn’t a concern for us, as we really wanted data ports in every bedroom, and we may as well have RF ports in every bedroom too, but the extra time it took to get all the variations sorted and signed, and for the land developer to actually invoice us (stopping Burbank in the meantime to continue on the paperwork process) was frankly agonising. The word on the street was that there’s been a delay in developer approvals as the land developer office is short-staffed, but we finally got there and as soon as we received the invoice we paid it on the spot.
Burbank need the payment receipt before they can proceed with anything, and I hope the developer doesn’t take another 2 weeks to send that out, but for now we’re on the cusp of getting council approval and building permits. After that, it’s just the sign-off on the final drawings, final approval of finances from the bank, site letter sent and off we go!
