Slab!

We now have a slab! Much sooner than expected. Things look to be more or less in the right place, though we have yet to go out there with a tape measure. The slab was completed on Saturday 28th March.



Diggers digging on our block.



Pipes on our block - this is the right hand side of the block in the slab pictures, where the kitchen is.



This is actually another block nearby having the slab laid. But we are guessing that ours looked something like this.



And here is our slab! This is taken from the front corner of the garage.



And another picture of the slab, taken from the front of the house. Garage is on the left, and a pile of dirt at the back.

Site start scheduled

Site start has been scheduled for Monday 15th March!

Not much else to report apart from that. At least we will be back in Melbourne by the time the interesting stuff is happening (not that what's under the house isn't interesting, but we'll be around to watch things like bricks being laid).

The spa bath

Ok, it's time to put this episode on the record. When we chose our house we signed up for a promotion giving us a choice of the following four spa baths:

* 1915mm Ovelle Deluxe oval spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump, (6No) chrome plated recessed jets, (4No) mini adjustable jets and headrests.
* 1675mm Stylus Newbury rectangular island spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump and 6 white jets.
* 1800mm Stylus Newbury rectangular island spa bath (1800i) with tiled hob, hot pump and 6 white jets.
* 1850mm Tuscany rectangular spa bath with tiled hob, hot pump and coloured jets.'

We were told that we could have any of these, and naturally we chose the Ovelle, having the most features and also a nice oval shape. This selection was done in August 2009.

Just a few weeks ago we received an email "informing" us that we could not have the Ovelle as it was too large, and that we would be given the Newbury 1675 instead. That is quite a downgrade, and I replied (all correspondence was by email) that we are not happy with the change. Much to my surprise, the reply was that there was nothing we could do about it, and that we would get no compensation because it was a promotional item. I suggested other options like choosing a non-promotional spa bath with us paying for it, or even leaving the bath out altogether and installing one ourselves, but in every case the consultant tried to bludgeon us into accepting what was presented as our only option.

Email exchanges continued throughout the week with both us and the Metricon consultant getting more and more annoyed at each other until on Thursday I arranged a phone call for the following Friday morning to sort things out.

And that phone call was quite a surprise! Metricon said that they would offer us the Newbury 1800I, which is more spacious than the 1675 originally offered, and it also has the "I", which means that instead of 3 jets only on either side it has 12 jets plus 8 additional smaller jets. It's even better than the original one we were expecting to have. The consultant explained that the Ovelle really couldn't fit in our bathroom, and apologized for having told us originally that we could have it (this was the same person who did our colour consultation, including choice of spa bath).

So in the end everything turned out ok. We were even offered a free upgrade to chrome jets, which were included with the Ovelle but usually cost extra on the Newbury. But we learnt an important lesson - if something doesn't seem right, keep asking until you're satisfied. If we had given up we would have gotten the basic Newbury 1675.

Settlement Timeline

I decided to post this, both for my own memories and for general amusement.

30th November 2009 - Statement of Compliance has been given to Land Titles Office. Solicitor says settlement is expected in week beginning 14th December.

15th December 2009 - Metricon's conveyancers say plan of subdivision has been registered, and request settlement no later than 29th December, for which they will give us a $3000 discount. Solicitor requests exact settlement amount required from ANZ. Settlement booked with vendor for Wednesday 23rd December at 11 am. Booking with Perpetual LMS (acting for ANZ bank) not made as they are not returning calls!

21st December 2009 (Monday) - Amount required for settlement is finalized, and I transfer the money via internet banking. Everyone is ready now except Perpetual LMS.

22nd December 2009 (Tuesday) - We receive a copy of a strongly worded fax from our solicitor to Perpetual LMS, saying we will be asking for $3000 plus costs if they don't turn up tomorrow. Apparently they still have not confirmed that they will attend settlement.

23rd December 2009 (Wednesday) 9 am - Perpetual LMS says that ANZ has "not completed the verification process" to allow them to settle. Our mortgage agent chases it up and finds that there has indeed been a mixup at ANZ and Perpetual have not received some necessary instructions from ANZ. ANZ is going to fix things, encouraged no doubt by the possibility of $3000 plus costs if they don't.

1 pm - Settlement is scheduled for 3 pm

4:30 pm - Settlement completed at 4 pm! Everyone goes home and gets ready for Christmas.

5th January 2010 - Metricon CSC requests confirmation that settlement has occurred. I email solicitor asking if we should have gotten a letter confirming settlement.

13th January 2010 - Our solicitor comes back from holiday, and points out that it was Metricon's conveyancers who handled the transaction, and asks why they are asking us for confirmation of a transaction they handled. I pass this on to Metricon

22nd January 2010 - Looks like things will be moving slowly.. It's 1 month since settlement and Metricon has only today confirmed that settlement is completed. I am busy now training our new Metricon CSC (this one handles construction, the old one was pre-construction) to confirm receipt of emails, as we had problems with them going missing in the past.

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.

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.

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..