Finding The Plot

The day my Husband Luke and I decided to build our own house was the day I saw an advertisement for an interesting, cheap block of land. It was quite close to the Bendigo CBD, 650m2, within our budget, and as a bonus it was very close to my Grandma's house. We drove over to look at the block but as it happened the block was an odd shape and only suitable for a double story house. Despite our first disappointment, we spent the rest of the afternoon looking at display houses and fell in love with the Dennis Family Homes designs.

We had discussed building a house previously but we were more interested in buying an established house as we liked the idea of living within walking distance of the CBD (we're not sure why considering we currently live 1200 meters from the CBD and could count the number of times we've walked there on 1 hand!).

The next block we looked at was in the City's Edge Estate, 2 minutes drive from my work, 5 minutes drive to the CBD, 750m2. It was up on a hill and had great views, even though it was slightly over our budget, we really loved the location and believed it would be a good investment. This block also turned out to be an odd shape and again we found there were limited single story house designs suitable. Another disappointment.

The following week the real estate agent called us with some news, a sale on another block in the City's Edge Estate had fallen through and they were asking if we wanted to make an offer before it went back on the market. This block was 700m2 and perfectly rectangular, we were definitely interested and asked them to hold the block for 3 days while we visited the bank for finance pre-approval. We were very excited at the prospect of living in such a prestigious estate, that was until we visited again and noticed the high voltage power lines running right overhead!! How did we miss that? After a weekend of reading about the dangers or living under HVPL we decided not to go ahead with the purchase. MAJOR disappointment.

Over the next month we looked at a few different blocks, and decided we would actually need to move out of town to find a suitable block within our budget. When I say "out of town" I mean a 10 minute drive, instead of the current 2 minute drive to the CBD.

We started looking at blocks in the McIvor Forest Estate in Junourton (10 minutes drive to the CBD) and to our surprise found a great 933m2 block for private sale. It's a perfect rectangle and backs onto beautiful bushland. We immediately knew this is where we would build our home.

Settlement was on 14 days and the block was ours as of 03/06/2013.

Our block at Sunset

Our block the day after settlement. The small trees had already been removed. 

Edit 13/07/2013: We received a letter from the local council this week, the developers are going to develop the bush behind our block! We knew it would be developed eventually but we thought we might have at least a few years of the lovely bush backdrop.