Buying The Right Piece Of Real Estate

Choosing the right piece of real estate or block of land is another area where a lot of thought (and possibly money) is needed. Just like choosing the right house, you need to get this one right. So many variables or choices to make when choosing your very own piece of real estate.

This is going to be one of if not the most important piece of information we learnt. Make sure your house can suit or be built on your prospective land. You really want the two (the house and the block of land) to go together well, sorry I mean fit together. Could be a real headache if it’s not done right.

We were nearly caught out on this major detail. Since we had actually purchased the block of land first, about a year before deciding on the type of house we wanted. This is where pre-planning would have made things a lot easier. The stage of land release that we purchased had blocks of differing sizes and orientation. Basically a street with the same type of block sizes on one side and different size blocks, on the other side.

We decided on a our present block because of it’s greater depth. Blocks (real estate) are like houses. Remember the word compromise. Naturally the size or dimensions of the land dictate what type of house can be built upon it. Choosing a piece of real estate with a greater depth then the other blocks, meant it was also more narrow than the other blocks.

If I had the chose again I would choose a wider block (more frontages). A lot of the houses we initially liked would not fit on our block of land because of the lack of width of the land. In some cases it wasn’t by much. This as you can imagine was quite annoying.

To have those houses or floor plans altered to suit the block of land, would involved greater cost because of alterations to house plans to suit. This would not have been the case it the block was wide enough to accommodate the width of the varying type of houses. So to put it simply I now know with real estate/size of land, the wider the better.

Our land was pretty much flat so we didn’t have to worry too much about excavation costs. Another lesson I learnt that to date I haven’t seen or previously informed about, is that at times one side of the street can be set at a higher elevation than the other side of the street. I questioned a representative of the subdivision why this is done and his response was either for views or to get as much of the morning sun as possible. I have noticed this difference in elevation from one side of the street to the other, in a lot of the new estates especially if they are built in hilly areas.

Looking For That New Home

A lot of thought went into what type of house we wanted built. There were so many things we had to consider, it really is like a maze. Everyone we have spoken to has said the same thing that you want to get everything perfect. And I mean perfect. Everything from choosing the right colours to the right finishes.

Two of our main drivers to consider were cost and size. Nowadays the quality of house materials used for the basic house construction is pretty much the same for the everyday type of standard home. It’s just the house finishing which is different. Unless the builder makes a big deal in promoting the materials that they use to build we found there all pretty much the same.

We did see some homes that could be built using fancy or new type of construction methods, but for some strange reason they were always more expensive. The majority of people don’t care how thick the beams in the roof are or the distance of the of the studs in the walls are, for two reasons which are most people have the intention of later buying a better house and second because they know that they will not be in the house for a great many years they're not really concerned about the building materials used.

Major builders are not stupid. They keep track of the changing tastes and the demographic of their customers. People’s lifestyles now are busier than ever before, so a growing number of people want a home that has that extra room for them to relax in, say maybe a theatre room, parents retreat etc. Things that the previous generation could only dream about are now becoming the normal situation. Another noted change is people’s desire to have homes that require less maintenance. Who really wants to spend 2-3 hours cutting the grass on a Saturday or Sunday morning when you could be doing the things you really like?

Houses on average are getting bigger, but how about the size of blocks? Well there not getting any bigger in fact there are actually getting smaller (great, less grass to cut). The quarter acre block (if you were lucky enough) residence that your (baby boomer generation) parents bought as their first home is now pretty much extinct. Unless you’re prepared to either pay more or travel further to and from, they’re not the standard anymore. You’ll be looking at around 500-600 square metres or about half of that quarter acre block I mentioned earlier.


As I mentioned earlier in my other post Home Remodel that the size of house was our main criteria, we never did look at town houses, units or apartments. It really is a personal or financial choice of the type of dwelling that you choose and that suits the individual. It wouldn’t be fair for me to comment on them as we didn’t look at them. So to be fair, I won’t comment on them.





My next post will be on the choice of land, which ties very closely with the type of house that is chosen.

Home Remodel

Buying a home to remodel is an experience we will probably remember for a long time. A time of feeling that a long held need had finally come to pass. In reality it was the first step of a continuing journey. Now this journey both good and bad is a real learning curve.
A lot of things about buying and owning a house that I didn’t know or wasn’t told. It’s amazing how quickly you learn when you have to.

From the start my wife and I decided to get a new house built. I would have to say that from the time we first started looking at display homes from the countless house builders, until the time we signed off to have our house built would have been a good three years. The reason why it took so long was that I wanted to pay off our car loan. Purchase the major things we needed like white goods, basic furniture and other electrical goods. This was on top of saving for an initial deposit for the house.

Looking back out of all the financial products I could buy, I wish that I hadn’t had purchased that car it was such a lemon, a great financial loss and basically a major set back. I could have used the money that it devalued by, towards the house. Knowing what I know now, if I was in that same situation again I would buy a car that I know would last me a good ten years. The last thing you need when you are buying your first home is a car that needs constant repair or attention.

Have you heard the saying “champagne taste on a beer budget?” Well if you hadn’t, neither did we until we started looking at display homes. Basically the saying means you don’t have enough money to buy what you like or what you are looking at. It felt like that with nearly all the houses we looked at. I guess listening to all the people who said it’s impossible to get your dream home, all my life, I had almost started believing them. I had the small grass hopper mentality.

That mentality that I couldn’t do it had to go, it was holding me back from even deciding on what houses I liked. That all changed when I saw I was going nowhere fast and we would be stuck in the same situation forever. Then one day after much thought we sat down and decided what type of house we would want and how we were going to manage to afford it. Now the type of house design we wanted was decided, this would eliminate looking at houses that didn’t meet our initial criteria.

Our next step was to look at the type of houses that fitted the criteria that we decided on. Now one thing became apparent by looking at countless display houses is that for any given price the ultimate choice comes down to two elements. Ready for some important information ! The two elements basically boil down to either size or features. This finding would mainly apply to people who are buying a spec house or a display home.

Regarding size or features of the house, means that if you want a house full of features you will be ultimately be buying a smaller house. If size is all that maters, don’t expect all the bells and whistles (extras) to be included in the price. It can also be a compromise where the two meet in the middle. Think of it as a sliding scale with a small house with a large number of options on one end and a large house with very little or no options on the other. I went more for size then extras figuring that we can do them ourselves later. This really is an option if you have a lot of patience (as we discovered later) and don’t have I want it now mindset.

The other reason why we chose a larger more basic house to start off with is that we have the space we need. We know without a doubt that we will not need to extend later on. After asking a few builders or home remodel contractors on their thoughts, all told us it is cheaper to have the size built in at the start then to have it done later on. Finishing off items like tiling, flooring etc in certain areas, I knew I could do later on or to organise instead.

Look out for later posts on financing, getting the house built and moving in.