Council Approval Received

Hi again!

We received the awesome news at the end of last week to tell us we have received Council Approval.

How exciting!

We have received all the documents to go back to the bank for final approval and letter to commence construction, Wisdom have already submitted the application for a Construction Certificate.

We have been signing off all the variations (including ones we don't want) and basically getting all the paperwork in order, so that Wisdom can send our file up for the Pre-tender and Construction Plans.

Today we paid the Section 94 Contributions to council, as we need to provide a receipt in order to receive our Construction Certificate so that's out of the way now too.

All systems a go-go-go-go-go!

Cx

Council Update [Week 2]

This week we had a lovely surprise of receiving a notice of payment for the Section 94A Contributions Plan. Yay.

I spoke with our CSO this afternoon for an update, and I misunderstood what she said last week.

So our file is actually with Wisdom Compliance at the moment, and they are making variations to our building plans and landscape plans, and won't be able to get it back to council until that's done.

I am having a little bit of a freakout about what variations they will be making to our balcony. That was such a huge issue for us when it came up, and we did our homework and got written approval from our Developer to say that it was compliant with their guidelines, and now we are having problems and aren't being told what variations they are actually making.

I really hope I don't see that balcony in our master suite when it's done.

I'm going to be thinking about this all weekend!

Cx

Council Update [Week 1]

Thus far we have had a site inspection which has been completed and passed.

We had a call from Wisdom today to tell us that we are having a couple of compliance problems, which were a little vague to me, but these were

• Upper lounge window needs to be smaller for neighbour privacy
• Retaining walls on the landscaping plan - not sure what they were, but sounded like they were confused why we needed so many when we are doing dropped edge beams all around the house
• Front porch issue - probably with the distance from the main body of the house because we had extended it, this balcony is going to be the death of me!!

Apparently they are working on it and aim to get it all resolved as soon as possible. Will be good to get more clarification on the last two issues.

Hoping for a stress-free weekend!

Cx

Plans Lodged With Council

We've made a little more progress over the past week - on Friday we were notified by Wisdom to say that they had now lodged our file with council! I would say that was a week ahead of schedule - definitely a pleasant surprise! 

So now the long wait begins! We were told it would take 4-6 weeks to receive approval, which would make it the end of October or beginning of November, so there is a good chance we'll get started by the end of the year yay!

A couple of issues we've come across have been:

• The front portico pier brick colour we chose was incorrect in our Developer Approval. Wisdom have since fixed this, and said we don't need reapproval from the developer so should be fine. (They had "Choc Tan" down, but we had asked for "Brown")

• We got an email about Additional Waterboard requirements for our Waterboard Approval, which involve additional costs for the following and possibly more depending on the report
• Sewer peg out report to determine location of sewer including pier inspection and stamping
• Survey boundary pegs

This is going to be the longest 4-6 weeks of our lives!

Cx

The Next Chapter

I'm pretty excited about the state of progress at the moment. We got a call from our new Customer Service Officer yesterday and we've confirmed Colour and Landscaping appointments for this Thursday. This is required for Developer Approval before it goes to council.

We are hoping to book in our Carpet/Tiling, Kitchen and Electrical appointments as well.

We've been advised that the timeline from here is something like the following:

• Developer Requirements
1. Landscaping Appointment -> Sign off on plans -> 5 working days to complete
2. Colour Appointment -> External Colour Palette Sign off
3. Then lodged to Developer for approval -> up to 10 working days for approval
• Council Requirements
1. Colour & Landscaping Appointments -> Sign off
2. DA Pack ordered -> 10 working days to complete
3. DA Lodgement to Council -> 4-8 weeks for approval (if no amendments required)
4. Waterboard Approval requested
5. Engineering drawings requested
6. Kitchen, Electrical, Tile/Carpet Appointments completed (in parallel to council lodgement)
7. DA Approval received -> Construction Certificate Lodged -> 2 weeks to receive
8. Pre-Tender Requested -> 5 working days to complete
9. Construction Plans Drawn -> 5 working days to complete
10. Construction Certificate received, Bank Documents received
11. File signed off to construction

That's a lot of steps now that I type all that up! Our CSO said that she would be in contact with us at least once a week to update us on the progress of our file, in particular she said that when our application is with Council she will call to check up on it weekly and then let us know how it's going, whether by a call or email. It will be nice to know we won't have to do any chasing around because they will keep us in the loop and not make us wait around during periods of inactivity.

So looking at those steps, we are looking at a time line no less than 2 months. It would be great to see a slab in November, I think that's my target. I'm not actually sure if that's achievable, but I will try to remain optimistic. As long as we don't delay the appointments and we choose everything we need to and sign off as soon as we can, then it's out of our hands and we just have to wait!

I'll try to get back on here next week and tell you how the colours went and what we've chosen!

Can you wish us luck again?!

Cx