Building a house? Not as easy as I thought!

We have decided to call Adelaide Home for the next 5 years. Once this decision was made, the first step was to buy a house. During weekends, we would check real estate web sites and visit open houses. So far, we have been to 30-odd open houses during the last few months, but nothing really caught our attention.

It was really difficult to find the right house we needed in the right location at the right price! Finally we decided to go the other way round and build a house. It is easier to find a location and the rest is in your hands. Building a house is a bit of hard work and time consuming but we thought "What the heck! Let's give it a go! ". At least you won’t be blaming someone else for something that is wrong in your house:)

Next, we identified an ideal block of land in a picturesque location. The process was really long winded since demand was high. As prices are rocketing, people are scurrying around to buy houses and land as quickly as they could. Since the area that we were eyeing was being landscaped by a developer with plans to have man made lakes, reservoirs and a playground around that area, it was even more difficult. We first had to register our interest with the developer. They then invited us to one of their land release events where we were given tokens with numbers.

Then they picked out random numbers from a box and people whose numbers were called could choose from the remaining available blocks. Luckily we got the block we wanted. It was a triumphant moment but a heart wrenching experience. Talk about a bizarre system... What demand and supply does to things around you!

The next step is to find a builder and we have been running around the last 2-3 weeks to find one. There are too many around and that makes it hard to pick.

Anyhow the ideal time frame is to get the house completed by Feb next year (2009). It is a bit too far fetched. There is a lot of work involved with long and hard weekends as well as weekdays in front of us. But it should be fun and I hope the end product comes out well.