Our excitement over the bond approval was short lived, as we are no further in starting the build than we were a month ago when I started my diary! We have had some admin issues, so let me explain a few of our pitfalls, and hopefully help others to prevent the same problems.
When we first started house hunting, we had pre-approval for a 100% bond. We then decided rather to build, and happily put in an offer on a property, only to be told that the bank would only finance 50% of a property value. If the property had already approved plans, the bank would finance 80% of the property and building cost. The reason for this is that there is not yet an asset, thus the risk for the bank is greater than on an existing house (i.e. fixed asset).
Our next lesson was in banking processes. We thought we could happily go ahead with our build once the bond had been approved. Unfortunately that is only step one of the process. The second step is bond registration which happens at the deeds office, and takes 6-8 weeks.
Our third lesson was in administrative headaches (we are now well stocked up on Panado). We are still waiting for municipal approval of our plans, something we anticipated would have happened a month ago! We cannot register the building bond until we have approved plans!
Hence, we are at a building standstill at present, and I still don’t have pictures of mounds of soil!
The point of this long explanation is to give direction to others, so hopefully you understand the process better than us. Also to let you know that I am going to suspend my diary for a while (hopefully 8 weeks at the absolute latest) until I have some decent progress to share with you.
Just a note that these are admin issues, and have nothing to do with the Light Steel Frame (LSF ) house. In the mean-time, we are constantly learning more and more about going ‘green’ and I have some interesting news to share with you about double glazing vs safety glass, but that will have to wait until the windows are going in…
So long, catch you again in a few weeks time!
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