The next questions is where do we start?
Luke and I opted to look at locations first.
We agreed early on we wanted to stay in the northern suburbs of Melbourne as it was close to family and friends.
There are currently a few estate that are quite well established in the north such as Craigieburn, Epping North and Mernda Villages. If you go further up the Hume Fwy there are some brand new estate starting to pop up, like Merrifield and Cloverton. These two guys are going to be HUGE!
After a lot of discussions back and forth and a couple of trips to the estates we ended up deciding on the new estate 'Cloverton' on Donnybrook Road in Kalkallo as the price was right (being so new) and it was only 15 minutes up the road from our current house.
In July we purchased our block of land:-
Lot Size: 489m2
Lot Width: 13.98 (Front) 15.93 (Back)
Lot Depth: 32.06
This now helps us narrow down which type of house we get.
Initially we were going to go with Porter Davis. The house plans were great, we found a couple that really suited us as well as the land and the price we were quoted looked good..... That was until we went to the World Of Style. We realized all the standard category 1 fixtures and fittings were horrible and we would be upgrading more than 50%. Our budget went right out the door :(
Back to the drawing board we went. After a lot of further research we came to the conclusion Henley Properties was the right match. We found a plan that worked and that Saturday we were off to the display. We instantly fell in love.
We met up with our sales consultant at the Mernda estate, she did up a quote straight away. At first, the price looked high but when you sat back and really went through it all, the standards were of much higher quality than what Porter Davis was offering and it included some additional extras such as an electrical package, laundry cupboards and our estates mandatory bush fire package. Once the site costs were add in, it pretty much was on par with the first quote from Porter Davis.
And the winner is..... you guessed it Marina Q1
Here are a couple of images from the display (Credit: Henley.com.au)
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| Marina Q1; Broadway Facade |
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| Open Plan Living: Looking out to side alfresco bi-fold doors |
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| Kitchen & Dining: Looking from the family room |
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| Open Plan Living: Looking from the side alfresco doors |
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| Family Room: Looking out to rear alfresco stacker doors |
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| Main Bathroom (I love a bath, haven't got one in our current home) |
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| Second bedroom: Generous Size |
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| Lounge Room: Soon to be Luke's man cave |
