3. The Land

From Dirt to Ownership

The block is in a reasonably large release on the Bellarine Peninsula. On the inland side it's bound by a golf course & winery.

I signed up around October 2013 and the land was still plain dirt. The expectation from the developer was that it would be titled before Xmas and ready to build by February.

By November they had started putting the infrastructure in - I'm about half way down on the left:


At this point, the delays started. Progress didn't happen, there were some wet periods and then the tradies took off for their Xmas break so work stopped. To add to this, the Victorian government still had not titled the land by the New Year. By March, the land had been cleaned up, crossovers put in (on the wrong side of the blocks, ensuring the garages got the winter sun), lighting and trees in place. Quite a nice job. The entire development is optic fibre for all TV, phone and data, so we should keep quite a clean look.

By April the services were in and some spring rain had put a nice green cover over it all. The land was still not titled, so the frustration continues with the government.

Can anyone tell me what trees these are & how they'll look in ten years?

Bit of a bummer that they terminated all of the services for the street right in front of my block - I'm the only one who doesn't get a tree. It also made it far too expensive to move the crossover so that the garage was on the south of the block.

The Purchase Process

The land was finally titled in May 2014 - five months late. Apparently the main villain was the electricity authority. I was finally able to engage a solicitor and get buy the land.

I was lucky to find a good local solicitor. Being new at all this, the process was a complete mystery to me and anyone in the chain could have stuffed me around. From titling by the government, you are not given a lot of time to complete the purchase, usually either seven or 14 days. 

It was all resolved on the allotted day, with a bit of drama. The developer's legal people turned up pretending we had never sent them copies of the contract etc (not true!), so there was a lot of last minute emailing of very large pdf's, together with some vigorous threats made on my behalf.