Monday, December 28, 2009

Settled!

Well settlement has finally happened! It happened on 23rd December but I was too busy partying to make a post about it until now. Here's the timeline, for the day where settlement was scheduled for 10 am:

7 am - Perpetual LMS (who is acting on behalf of ANZ) informs our solicitor that they are not authorized by ANZ to complete settlement. Mortgage agent contacts ANZ, reminding them that they will be costing us $3000+ if they don't settle today, and we'll be asking for compensation. Our solicitor had already informed Perpetual the previous day that we would be asking for $3000+ if they didn't settle today.

9 am - ANZ realizes they had indeed not authorized Perpetual to settle, and arranges to settle at 3pm the same day

4 pm - Much to everyone's surprise, the land is settled!

Our contribution ended up being much less than we had budgeted for, so we now have quite a bit of money left over, despite our best attempts to spend it over christmas. Things are looking good. I've informed our Metricon CSC about the settlement but he's on holiday no doubt.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Settlement 2

There is more news - after a monumental struggle (which made good use of our mortgage broker's lion taming skills), we actually know, more or less, how much money we need for settlement this Wednesday (2 days from now). I've transferred the money directly to our solicitor so he can have the money ready. So now we are back to waiting..

The theory is that everyone heads on down to the vendor's place and hands over a bunch of cheques and titles and everyone goes home happy. But the cheques need to be for the right amount of money, which is not so straightforward. Especially when the company handling the transaction for the bank is in Bangalore and doesn't return calls. Seems like a good example of outsourcing blame - if something goes wrong it's not the bank's fault, it's the fault of this other company.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Settlement

We've just gotten notification of registration of the plan of subdivision, so things are starting to happen now. Our deadline is 29th December to settle, though it probably needs to be earlier given that's more or less christmas holidays.

Our solicitor advised that the people handling settlement for the bank have in the past forgotten to bring bank cheques to settlement, and that they would prefer that we send the money to them rather than via the bank, so that's what we're doing.

Now back to waiting again..