Latitude Homes

This is a picture of Stephen from Latitude Homes. He's our planner and we met up with him during the weekend to finalise our plans.

Stephen's knowledge and customer service is superior. He's very easy to deal with and really listens to his customers needs.

Check out our plans for the outside of our house! Stephen has added in our proposed tennis court, and is going to excavate and mark it out so that all we need to do is lay the concrete. That won't be for about a year, but at least we can 'visualise' it, :-)

Oh, and the only things we added to our house plans were frameless showers (because they add value), a rooflight that shines from the top storey through the staircase and onto the entrance (a neat feature that will make our entrance warm and sunny), and a glass balustrade for the staircase (because glass looks cool).


Stephen reckons our house will be worth well over 1 million, and that Latitude Homes will be seeing the project right through - even though its just a kit-set. Now thats what I call great service!

$39000 Deposit

I am SO excited. We have finally paid our 39k deposit for our section - and we are pretty sure we are aware of all the charges that we may face regarding Council fees etc.

Our settlement day has been moved to January the 16th (to allow us time to apply for our PIM and Building Consent before we have to start paying for our mortgage)

What we are trying to avoid is paying for a mortgage and rent at the same time - otherwise thats just dead money that we can better use elsewhere.

So the plan is to have everything approved by the Council so we can start building on the same day that we have to make our first mortgage payment.

We will also be moving out of our rental property, and into my mothers house to save $$. But I want to leave that part for as late as possible. No offence mum.

Development Contribution Fee

My lawyer emailed me a copy of a letter he received from the Developers lawyer that states that "all development and financial contributions required by Council have been paid on the land" and that "They do not agree to any variation".

He has asked me to go back to the Council to ask specifically if there are any development contribution fees payable by us.

He also explained that the reserve contribution is always paid by the developer, and sometimes the development contribution fee is paid by the developer.

Well I have just returned from the Manukau City Council who informed me that the Development Contribution Fee is payable when you apply for your Building or Resource Consent - whichever you apply for first. This extra fee is $5956 plus GST. This means that the council has arranged the fee so it belongs to us. Thank You Manukau City Council, we can always count on you to blow the budget.

Plus there is a sewerage fee of $4090 plus GST.

After a few minutes of thinking I have decided that I have budgeted for 20k worth of Council Fees so I am still going to go for it and ring my lawyer to pay the deposit.

LAWYERS ADVICE

Our Lawyer is Awesome. We were meant to pay for our deposit for our section but he has requested that another clause be put into our contract so that we do not have to pay for the 6k development contribution fee from the Council.

There is a grey area regarding the development fee, as the person who is selling the section can argue that they should not have to pay for this as he they are not building on the section. But the buyer says they should not have to pay for this fee as this fee should have been paid for prior to purchase.

We are waiting to here back from the developer to see if they will accept this clause which will save us 6k.

UNFORESEEN COUNCIL FEES

OMG! Today we went into the Manukau City Council to find out if there were any hidden fees that we may come across, and we found out that there is a 6k development clause fee, plus a 6k water connection bill that we have not budgeted for.

This is not including the usual building and resource consent fees that the Council imposes on home-builders. Time to crunch numbers again to find out what we can do to slot these fees into our budget.

Good to know however that you can pop into the Council and ask for the assistance of a Project Manager for free.

Gosh I hope this is going to be the only unforeseen charge, but at least we know!

EXTENSION!

Today is the day that we are meant to pay our 39k deposit for our section.

But our lawyer has asked the seller for an extension as he wants us to check with the council to see if there are any developmental fees that may be imposed on us when we start building. This is because the developer may NOT have paid all his council fees etc - and if we buy the section when there are still council fees to pay then we won't get our code of compliance unless we pay the fees ourselves. And that could cost up to 30k.

Therefore, if you are purchasing a section then you should ALWAYS have a Developmental Clause in your contract.

So now we have to wait another week for our due diligence clause to run it's course - but if it saves us money then I'm not complaining.

Besides, our Lawyers the man. Go Mr Maharaj!

DRAWING UP THE PLANS

Last week we met with the Directors of Latitude Homes to talk through our ideas. We were very happy with our Sales Rep as we felt he understood the kind of house that we would like.

The actual Template/Suggestion was almost perfect, and all we needed to do was squeeze in another bedroom at no extra cost. I can imagine that this process can take hours - because everything from the sizes of the wardropes to the position of the laundry needs to be discussed, but we managed to agree on a plan within half an hour.

Posting a job really helped me save time, because I was contacted by so many Kitset Home Providers that I was able to find the perfect House Plan.

Today we have just paid our deposit for the drawing up of our House Plans to Latitude Homes - so now there is no holding us back.

Latitude Homes is allowing us to use www.tradeexperts.co.nz to find a Cabinet Maker for our Kitchen, a Kitchen Installer, a Plumber, etc etc - as we may be able to get better quotes than what they are offering.

But first I need to post a job for an Excavator. Or maybe I will do that when I receive the plans so that the Tradesmen can provide me with more of an accurate quote.

The picture above is a photo of what the outside of our house will look like.

DUE DILIGENCE

After a bit of negotiating we finally settled on a price of $390k for a section in Tuscany Heights, Manukau. Fantastic! I think the agent Wayne Shallard really fought the price down for us because he found out we have an autistic son, and he was able to relate to our desire to bring him up on a large section as he has an autistic granddaughter.

I feel in my gut that we have made the right choice.

Wayne advised us to add a "Due Diligence" clause which basically protects the buyer against everything, including changing their mind.

Our due diligence clause allows us to check that the section we are buying is actually 'buildable' and suitable for our purposes.

MY WISH LIST

I couldnt resist acting prematurely and creating a wish list of everything I wanted in my future home. My list was pretty basic(as I now know we are not as 'well-off' as I thought we were), and easy to put together (as I have a scrapbook full of very cool designs that I like).

At the moment I really like this plan from Latitude Homes because it has a great layout that will suit our family of 5. Plus they allow their customers to choose from a Kitset option, Shell-only option, or a Full Build Service.

To save money we are going to choose the KITSET option. We can do this as my husband is in the construction industry and we have a couple of chippies in our team. I wonder if they'll build my house for a quater-pack from KFC?, haha.

My FIRST Job Posting onto TradeExperts.co.nz - 2nd November 09

Waiting for the bank gave us time to hunt for a suitable section. We really want a lifestyle block close to town, and Tuscany Heights had a few in Manukau. We found our 'almost perfect' section pretty quickly. I think we both agreed on this particular section because it was the cheapest and flattest that we could find in the area. The asking price was $425. We are hoping they will give it to us for $350k.

Confident that the section I wanted was as good as mine, I posted a job onto www.tradeexperts.co.nz for a Kitset Home Plan to suit. The response was fantastic and saved me hours of phone-calling and googling. The Tradesmen who responded were companies that offered executive-type kitset homes over 250 square metres, and I was quickly presented with a list of options.

Gosh I love the internet!

APPROVED!!

Another long week of feeling like a homeless person dragged by as we waited for a written/confirmed response from BNZ. Then my husband asked me out to lunch to tell me that it was a YES! I felt so relieved!
Now I can start dreaming about colour schemes and furniture placement. Yeeah!

BNZ COMES TO THE RESCUE!! 11th October 09

It only took BNZ one day to send some very friendly and helpful staff members over to talk to us about our situation. Fantastic service considering our current Business bank (Westpac) had failed to reply to any of our phone-calls or emails. This was the plan.
Step 1/ Move our existing Business Accounts over to BNZ
Step 2/ Allow BNZ to assess our mortgage possibilities using the financial position of our Business as leverage
Step 3/ Get Approved!
One week after meeting with BNZ our relationship manager was able to give us a glimmer of hope. He had looked through our financial reports and concluded that our core business was very healthy and that they were likely to offer us a mortgage. All we needed now was a written approval.

MAJOR SETBACK!! 28th Sep 09

Our mortgage broker just told us that our bank ‘Sovereign’ was not going to discharge 64k of our profit - because they were going to put it towards our rental property that we also have with them – and there was nothing we could do about it. That would leave us with a pitiful $60k deposit for our next ‘dream home’. Not even enough to buy the house we just sold back!

I felt completely stupid and ripped off. This is the third house we have owned and sold. How could we not know that banks could do things like that?

We now have no choice but to either purchase a cheaper house, or rent and save up again. Actually - we do have a choice. We can choose to BUILD our own home!

AUCTION DAY!! - 15th Sep 09

After a whole month of open homes we managed to sell our 240 square metre executive house with Barfoot & Thompson under the hammer for 574k – 15k under the GV of $590k! Disappointed? Kind of. Relived? Absolutely!
We had spent a recommended 5k towards marketing our home for this auction, and I did not want my 5k to go straight down the toilet - even if it meant losing out on 15k.

But realistically, I feel that I was lucky enough to even find a buyer because I we were trying to sell our home during the recession, and because the media had managed to scare away most of the buyers with their bad press about South Auckland.

By the way, our plan was to sell our house while the market was low, and to purchase a nicer home in a better area while the market was low.

Selling our house before putting an offer on a new home meant that we would have the buying power to purchase a house without conditions...except a financial clause.

Living in SOUTH AUCKLAND - August 14th 09

According to the "Where to Live in Auckland" book, South Auckland is the no-go zone for the rest of Auckland who wouldn't dream of buying in our area.

I disagree. To me, South Auckland is a vibrant and exciting community that embraces all cultures and 'walks of life'.

But since the market disagreed and my executive home in Manukau Heights was rapidly dropping in value, I decided it was time to sell. Especially since the market was low, and the recession was ending.

Who did I call? Lloyd Singh of Barfoot & Thompson. An energetic sales agent who had been tempting us to let him sell our home for the past couple of months. He is the only agent we will EVER use because he is an honest and truthful person that works for the seller. This is a picture of him below.

Just an Average Kiwi Family - August 13th 09

Hello! I am a happily married wife and mother of 3 full-on children.
My husband & I are both in our early 30's, and together we juggle 2 pretty good jobs, and a semi-crazy family. We have always bought and sold in South Auckland because this is where I grew up, and my youngest son is severely autistic and attends a 'special needs' school in Papakura.

I was persuaded/forced to start this blog by my Management team as we are in the Construction business, and I can tell a pretty good story, haha.

I would also like to find out first-hand if the 3-2-1 myth about building a house is true - meaning, does building a house really take 3 times as long, cost twice as much, and is so stressful you'll only ever do it once?

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