Now let’s get started with your land”¦. (remember, zoom ahead or backwards as often as you need).
Land
You’ve found a block you love! Fantastic! Now the first instinct here can be to run and place a contract on it straight away – but wait!
Firstly: Questions to ask the agent or seller (vendor) when you view the land (to let your broker know):
- What is the zoning on the land?
- Are the titles issued yet? If not, when will they be.
- And you want to get a copy of the title so you can discuss this with a potential builder.
- You also want to ask the agent to email you a copy of the contract.
Secondly:
- Never sign anything without a solicitor or conveyancer looking over the contract for you – their job and ours is to protect you and this is how you protect yourself.
- Let your broker know if the title has been issued on the land yet? If not then we’d recommend you get your contract subject to finance AFTER the issue of title as some lenders won’t confirm unconditionally until titles are issued. (If you can’t get this approved by the seller, let us know as we have some lenders for whom getting title issued can be done after approval).
- Please forward your contract (before you sign but after your conveyancer has looked over it) and all the information in the first section to your broker so they can check out your finance clause for you and give you any pointers.
Thirdly:
There is no point buying a block of land you cannot build upon!
I’m going to repeat it so that there’s no mistaking this point.
There is no point buying a block of land you cannot build upon!
So”¦
- Before you buy your block it’s best to chat with a couple of builders to see if they foresee any issues building what you want on your block, also to get a (rough) estimate of cost. Typically your architect / builder will go out and walk over your site prior to commenting on this where possible.
- The slope, vegetation, easements, covenants, services to the site all impact on what you can build and the cost.
- Be sure you’ve taken your solicitor/conveyancer’s advice about a soil test.
- Also – think about what the neighbours are going to be like, can you see them, what are they building, if it’s all vacant land, are there restrictions on what you / they can build?
<<insert a photo of a weird house here>>
Finance Wise:
Your broker’s job now is to either apply for indicative finance for the build cost as well as the land (so that as best as possible you know you can build on the home) OR if your deposit isn’t high enough to do that yet, then to give you an estimate of what you need to get to deposit wise to be able to do your build – and to run internal calculations to know that once you have your deposit together, that we have enough capacity income wise to build.
Please note that this is not an exact science – if your incomes change, if bank’s policy changes, if your build costs blow out or your valuation does not stack up then there can be further hurdles. Building is not as straight forward as buying an existing home and as such, you get the perks of brand new and choosing your features, but probably a little more stress along the way.
And lastly when all of the above is confirmed”¦
Then you’re ready to sign a contract (subject to finance!).
Not sure what to offer? Read this one:
https://www.uploans.com.au/blog/2018/03/01/how-do-i-know-what-to-offer!/
Up against competition? Have a read here:
https://www.uploans.com.au/blog/2017/01/11/multiple-offers-what-to-do-to-stand-out-in-a-crowd/
And as always, please yell out with any questions, I love talking about this stuff (if you hadn’t realised already) and I’d love to help make this process as easy and fun as possible for you!
Happy hunting,
Kirsty