Choosing the right house for us…

Quite early on, prior to purchasing the land, my son and I had started looking at display homes. It was a bit of a challenge finding a floor plan that would suit our lifestyle as well as the block orientation. This was our initial list of wants/needs: • 4 bedrooms • Alfresco area • Double garage • 2 living areas • Wide frontage (if possible) • Air conditioning • Dishwasher. The trouble was that the more we looked at displays, the more things we realised we ‘needed’! There were lots of floor plans where the houses were long and skinny but we wanted a ‘wide’ house. We wanted to take advantage of our 14m frontage as much as possible so that it would leave space at the back for a decent size backyard and the “BIG’ shed of course! This ruled out many of the floor plans we saw. We also wanted an alfresco area, which needed to be on the opposite corner of the house from the garage (which was on the south side of the house) in order to take advantage of the northerly aspect (and sun). There didn’t seem to be many floor plans that fit the bill. Our preferred builder at this stage was Burbank Homes, who seemed to have a really top quality product. Their display homes were beautiful and they had floor plans that would have worked for us, with a bit of tweaking, that we could have afforded (just!), but there seemed to be one or two things that made us hesitate. My son actually came across Carlisle Homes (I’d never heard of them) and brought home a brochure for me to have a look at. He seemed impressed with their display homes and had spoken briefly to one of the sales reps. They had a floor plan that looked closest to perfect (for us)….the Bellaire 25. It had 4 bedrooms, double garage, 2 living areas, wide frontage, and flooring, air con, ducted heating & dishwasher were all included and it was in the right price range. I made the effort to go to the display village and have a look for myself. There was no display home for this specific floor plan, however, looking at the other display homes gave me a good idea of the quality of homes they build…and they were nice! Beautiful in fact. The only issue I had in looking at display homes was that you never knew what was an upgrade and what wasn’t. Be aware of this when looking at display homes! Just keep in mind things like ceiling heights and ‘extra’ cupboards in the kitchen/laundry/bathrooms may not be standard. There are many more things that don’t come as standard and after we had browsed the display village a couple of times we asked the sales rep to go through the display home with us and point out specifically what was standard and what wasn’t. This was a very helpful exercise and enabled us to work through what we felt was worth upgrading and what wasn’t. The sales rep at the time was a credit to Carlisle Homes and we felt that he was being open and transparent, which we appreciated. At the same time we were being ‘wooed’ by Carlisle Homes, we were also keeping our options open as we hadn’t exhausted the rest of the new home builders market. Our next point of call was Mimosa Homes. OMG!! We looked at the Johanna 24 specifically. Stunning!! Beautiful homes, contemporary & stylish…and pretty much outside of our price range! Their designs and interiors were probably the best we’d seen, but sadly, the floor plans weren’t exactly what we wanted and the prices were just a bit of a stretch. Oh well. The good thing about this was that we felt we had done our homework and by process of elimination Carlisle Homes was the last one standing. Our next visit to Carlisle Homes was a bit more serious. We took along the details of our block and sat down with the sales rep to discuss our options. He was extremely helpful and obviously knew his product. He went through some of the upgrade options as well as discussed considerations about our block ie. soil reports, survey reports, slab types required, land fall, bushfire requirements etc. He also did an overlay and showed us where the house would sit on the block. We felt that based on the floor plan (first consideration) as well as their professionalism and good reputation, Carlisle Homes and the Bellaire 25 was the best option for us. On 7 March 2014, we paid a $1,500 deposit. Details: Carlisle Homes, The Essential Series: Bellaire 25 $179,400 base price, not including site costs or any upgrades. Considerations: Carlisle Homes don’t offer fixed price site costs as many of the other builders did. This was a concern as the costs could range from $5,000 to $50,000! We loved this floor plan so much that we felt that Carlisle Homes was our only option and we trusted that the site costs wouldn't be too exorbitant. Time would tell!