By the skin of our teeth

ANZ are a pack of tools!



There I said it!  I am positive that anyone who has had to get a house loan, in particular a construction loan will have called their lender a tool (or worse) , at least once!

Our relationship with ANZ had actually been going quite smoothly until this final invoice.  We were told it could take 5 - 10 working days to finalise this payment as they need to organise a valuer to confirm the house has actually been built as per specs and ummm, well, that's about it really.  I wish I had a 10 day turnaround to perform my tasks at work!

So, last Monday, the same day I received the invoice from Eden Brae, we sent the request off to ANZ via our Broker.  At the time we were hopeful we might have been ready for handover last Friday so our Broker asked if it could be looked at urgently.  "Nope, sorry it could take up to 10 days", was the reply.  Awesome.

Our Broker has been following up ANZ regularly and one minute she's told the valuer has been booked and then today someone confirmed the valuation still hasn't been booked!!  We're 7 days into the turnaround timeframe and no sucker has passed on our SS details to the Valuers!  The tools let slip who the Valuers are though so our Broker got on the phone to them and has now got the ball rolling.

Oh and the best bit?  They have had us and Eden Brae running around all last week in circles chasing down an Interim Occupation Certificate (said they needed it before releasing payment) until the bright spark at ANZ today said, "Oh, hold on, they're in NSW aren't they?  Then we don't need the interim certificate after all!"

There.  Vent over.  It had to be done.  No home build is complete without a dummy spit over the bank!  It would have been positively un-Australian not to have had one.

On to much cooler news......It is verrrrrrrrrry likely handover will be this Friday.

*Fingers crossed*

This is all really going to happen!

Today is another very exciting day!  ANZ have come through with the goods and formally approved our loan!!!  There is always a little thought in the back of your mind wondering what if we don't get finance and we've committed all this money & time etc etc.  But we can relax now and know it's full steam ahead.

So, now on to other pressing matters and deciding on the feature wall colours for our boy's bedrooms.  I have 2 beautiful blues picked out.  'B' thinks we should just do them both the same colour but I don't want their rooms to be identical.  Some nice greens to choose from too....

Oh well, if this is the worst of our problems, it's all good!!

Something's starting to happen!!!

After what feels like forever, things are starting to happen!  It's been a week of high's and I'm hoping there's not a low waiting around the corner to bite us on the bum!

Our highlights

• Land is looking finished, with street signs now up
• Developer confirmed that land should be registered by end of the month and settlement to occur early December
• Eden Brae have been granted access to the land and conducted soil and survey tests yesterday (don't believe anything out of the ordinary was discovered)
• Street name confirmed!!!
• Hubby met our neighbour and said they were really lovely!
• Received official sub-division documents and our land is slightly larger than originally thought!!!
• Developer has gone and put in a concrete drive-way up to the building envelope (we're in a battle-axe) - this was quite unexpected but very much appreciated!
• Discovered my colleagues husband is a brickie with Eden Brae and was given the name of a Site Supervisor that they highly recommended - asked our Customer Service Representative if we could have him as a Site Supervisor and it was confirmed as a-ok!
• In the process of organising our loan, we were told of the few banks that do an upfront valuation.  As I wanted to avoid any nasty surprises where possible, we went down this track and the valuation came in spot on for what we're paying (which is what you'd expect but doesn't always roll that way!).  Turns out the valuer has also built the same house!!  What are the chances?!

So as you can see, it's been a great week!!!

Official surveys etc will go off to council next week and our finance application was submitted yesterday - so fingers crossed things continue to go well.

Have to say - every step of the way (so far) with Eden Brae has just been second to none!