Our Burbank Ascent 2500 / 2600Building with Burbank in Aurora Estate

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!

We have the plans signed off – one step away from the finalised plans. Burbank did soil tests but they haven’t gotten back to us with the final plans that detail slab information. To speed up the process a bit we signed off on the draft for everything else – Burbank made some minor mistakes in Bedroom 1 and we got a chance to add in some minor things that we forgot at our colour appointment (tiled skirtings, some exterior lighting, extra power point).

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Update (04/07/2010): I went to our lot yesterday and hammered in a sign, and also took some pictures (click on ‘Read more’ to see them).

Land has settled (actually it was yesterday). The land’s officially ours now.

Had a chat with my contact coordinator at Burbank, apparently there is a 2 week delay in doing any building development in my stage due to bad weather. When I went there last week, the roads were absolutely filthy with dirt and it was just this huge mud bowl. I hope the weather dries up a bit so we can at least get a slab down.

I’m heading off to the block on the weekend to hammer in our sign, I’ll bring the camera with me and take some snaps.

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Update 23/06/2010: Maria contacted VicUrban about the pegs and they said that the area needed to be resurveyed anyway (probably due to the repiping that they did) so we won’t be paying for the resurveying. Having said that, after settlement the land is our responsibility so we’ll try our hardest to keep guard of our lot and make sure no other pegs get “misplaced” (as I’ve heard about so many times before by other builders).

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Just another quick update, checking the Victorian Government website for the Land Channel showed our land as successfully titled. Maria and I went there yesterday to try and measure the plot (which was very muddy!) and found only 2 of the required 4 pegs. Our south-west and north-east pegs were missing; the NE one is probably buried pretty deep now as there were some large machinery tracks and freshly dug earthworks for the sewer pipes, which is understandable. The SW one on the other hand has vanished, and we couldn’t find it even after digging around a little.

Having said that, the north-west peg was pretty spot on, 30m deep and in line with the south-east peg, 14m wide.

The solicitor had sent us papers for transfer of land but we sent it back in regular mail, which Australia Post promptly lost. We had to go into the city and sign the documents again, which was annoying, but we’re glad now that it’s done. Note to self: use Express Post all the time for important documents.

Hey everyone,

I’ll keep this one short as it’s only a bit of news – Maria called our solicitor today after they left a message to us late Friday afternoon (I reckon they did that on purpose to keep us in suspense for a whole weekend!) and found out that settlement for the land will occur on 2nd July. Can’t wait!

As I mentioned in my last post, Burbank were pretty quick in getting us an appointment to The Edge, the studio that is located in the city where you can pick your options for your house build. Maria and I were pretty excited, and frankly we couldn’t wait until the day would come for us to go and have some fun with our available choices.

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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.