Good question. What will I do?
Pretend that I'm an ostrich and stick my head in the sand.
I continued to live life pretending I didn't have this house, wasting time and ignoring my holding costs.
From time to time I would think about my house, or more specifically, my loan which I had fixed at the peak of 7.25, and watch as the interest rates dropped, and dropped, and dropped. GFC. Dropped 3 points in 6 months and by April 2009 the cash rate was at 3. Break costs for the fixed loan was about the same price as the difference in interest, so I left it.
Lesson learnt. Costly lesson learnt.
After 6 months and with nagging from my siblings, I decided I better do something with this land.
December 2008 - March 2009
Where do I start? What do I do?
Initially I was going to build 2 townhouses.
Then I changed my mind.
Mum wanted to build a house which could be rented out to students. So I looked at the volume builders, went to their display homes, looked at heaps of house plans, collected lots of brochures, and eventually decided on a Simonds home which I could modify. I met with the Customer Service rep and talked about the changes I wanted to make. It was a good design where I could extend it, and close it off internally so that students could stay separately. It was single storey, and long. (I'm not sure why I didn't look at double storey houses.) Then I decided that was a dumb idea. Firstly, I didn't want students. Secondly, having a long house on a sloping block would mean high site costs. Thirdly, for resale value having a double storey house would make more sense.
So then I decided that I would do 2 houses. A positive of volume builders is that they are significantly cheaper. So I then thought about building one house first, and then building the second house later. It would also mean that I could avoid going through town planning. Again, I looked at the volume builders and more house plans before deciding on one by National Builders Group that I could modify. I met with the Customer Service rep, talked about changes that I wanted to make, and even went so far as paying a $1000 deposit. This was despite the private open space being about 15cm too short. I changed my mind and decided this was another dumb idea. Firstly, 15cm too short may as well have been 150cm too short - council would view it as very significant. Secondly, I had no idea what the back house would be like and how it would fit. Thirdly, town council could potentially deal even harder with my project as it would be obvious to them what I had done. Fourthly, volume builders are shoddy.
So after 3 months, I was back to square one. Buidling 2 custom townhouses.
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