And so it begins....

My husband and I started wandering display villages when I was 8.5 months pregnant with our first child, in the interests of encouraging our baby into the world. At this point we had no real intention of building a house. Unfortunately for our budget, we quickly became a lot more interested in finding out costs of land around our area, and house plans that suited our lifestyle!

With two weeks to go until D-Day (birth), we fell in love with a plan by a new company, 8 Homes (by UrbanEdge). A quick chat to the sales rep and some indicative costs, and we were on our way to securing pre-approval. Our son was born on 16th April, and so house stuff was put on hold for a week while I recovered. While I was in hospital, the developer and builder were working on contracts and tenders, and we found out that our chosen block would not work with our house plan. So we made a mad dash to two other estates in Wallan and settled on a gorgeous 14x35m (495m2) block on top of a hill.

Formal finance approval came through on 13th July, which was a big relief. Being first home buyers, and not having saved a deposit (we would have, but didn't know we would be building a house!), meant that we were relying on a lender accepting the First Home Owners Grant as our deposit source and lending us 93% of the purchase price.

Settlement on our block was 27th July - we officially owe a lot of money to the bank who holds the title to our block of land!

Our plans are all finalised, our building permits have been issued, and they are scheduled to break ground on 10th August. Apparently we should be popping champagne in our kitchen before Christmas 2012, according to our 98 day contracted build time.

Sign on and enjoy the ride.