So i thought i would start a blog series on building our new home, the process and how we are going about building the whole things ourselves, ill start with our land purchasing experience.
One of the main reasons we moved to Queenstown was the opportunity of purchasing land and building for ourselves. This is something we could never afford to do if we continued to live in Auckland, it's just too overpriced. We had our eye on the new subdivision in Queenstown called Hanley's Farm long before we made the move, we signed up to a lonnnng list of hopefuls at the end of 2016 and paid our $2000 NZD deposit to be in the queue. After a few section releases we realised it wasn't really going to work until we actually committed to moving and were able to attend the sales days as you had to be present to purchase.
4 stages of Hanley's Farm had been released by the time we had finally made the move to Queenstown. In this time the realtor had decided to scrap the waiting list and return the deposits, the list had just gotten too long. We still kept up to date with all newsletters and social media following the progress and development of the new subdivision, just waiting for that email to say the next release was only moments away.
Tuesday August 14th 2018 i opened my inbox to find an email from the realtor about the stage 5A release, from this point, it was the craziest week of our lives to say the least. An open day was scheduled on Saturday 18th August, only 4 day after the first email was received with pricing set to be released on Wednesday 22nd (sales day), so much had to happen in this time, we had no clue where to even begin and so many questions, no much sleep was had that week.
Can we afford it? Will the bank even lend us enough to build? How do you find a lawyer? Are lawyers scary? Will i become broke if i just ask the lawyer a question?
We decided to go and see a mortgage broker to answer all these questions for us and to see if we were financially able to purchase in this release, or wait for the next. Friday the 17th we booked in to talk with Loan Market here in Queenstown, we spent an hour figuring out exactly what the banks would be willing to lend us, what our repayments would be on our mortgage and answering all the small questions keeping me awake at night. I can't recommend seeing a mortgage broker more, not only was the consultation free, but they were able to connect us to a lawyer who had vast experience dealing with first home buyers purchasing in Hanley's Farm.
Saturday came around in a blink of an eye, the realtor had set out the next stage (5A) with pegs for each section so we could visually see where they were placed in relation to the sun etc. They pinged a bit of a surprise on us as we were greeted by an agent when we arrived, not only were they releasing Stage 5A, but they had a sneaky 5B stage in there too, meaning only the perspective buyers who attended the open day had knowledge of these sections (promising!) Because there is SUCH a high demand for these sections, we were asked to choose our top 5 sections ready for when the pricing is released as you are not guaranteed to get your first pick, or let alone score a section at all.
After getting in touch with the lawyers which were recommended on Monday 20th we found ourselves filling in paperwork to ensure on the day we had every single legality covered. It was great to go in and see our lawyer too as she was able to give us a run down on how previous releases had worked in the past.
Wednesday 22nd was here, we were freaking out. 8am on the dot an email was expected from the realtor with a list of pricing for all the sections. Normally work starts at 8am so we went in a little later that morning. We pre-wrote our email listing all our section options so when the clock ticked 8, we could hit send. The email with pricing came through at 7.59am, it was a mad rush to check the pricing of the sections we had picked out, as soon as we saw the number and agreed it was totally fine , we hit send..... and not the nervous waiting began. 10 minutes went by, 15 minutes went by.. i started freaking out as the lawyer has said they wouldn't accept any emails prior to 8am, and we replied to the pricing email which came through at 7.59am.. not 8!! I had a wee melt down and re-sent our section options again, just in case, only 15 minutes later.
by 8.25am we had a reply, we had scored ourselves our second choice (only over the back fence of our first choice, our neighbours will love us)
We finally scored our own 748sqm slice of Queenstown!!
So now you can understand why it was the craziest week.. but the stress was worth the outcome for sure. We then had the lawyers look over the paperwork which we signed and had 3 days to have a 10% deposit paid to the realtor to secure the section as our own.
After scraping together all our savings, some help from both of our parents (if we were able to use our Kiwisaver we wouldn't have needed the help, but there was no way we could withdraw our funds within 3 days, so this will be used at settlement) we had our names signed on that pre-purchase sales agreement.
The adventure has just begun!
