Saturday 27 October 2012

In The Beginning...

It all started out as a bit of fun.

We noticed the abundance of new display home villages not too far from where we were living. As children, our mothers took us through Display Homes (think Masterton at Warwick Farm in the 90's). You remember how exciting it was..."this is my room!" in every single house. We thought we'd take a look, just for fun. The two of us had just spent a decent amount of money updating the gardens and some of the interior of the old house so we had no intention of moving any time soon. The excitement of display homes and the frequency of 'dodgy' activities (and some unsavoury characters) in the area we lived, were enough motivation for us to get things done. Besides, this was Stephens house, and it didn't feel like 'home' to me.

One thing led to another and we were talking to someone from LoanMarket to see how much we could borrow from the bank. Once we had that sorted, we found ourselves a good real estate agent to get things under way.We had already looked around at the areas under development. There are two major growth areas in Sydney at present. South West (out past Campbelltown/Liverpool) and North West. We started by signing up to the regions websites to obtain land price lists.

Gledswood Hills
Gregory Hills

Oran Park
Spring Farm

Gledswood Hills was not ideal location wise, and was not serviced by public transport. I will need a bus to get to work so this was never going to work. If I recall correctly we weren't too keen on the pricing either. It didn't help that my biggest priority has always been to get a decent sized yard for dogs and future kids to play in.

Gregory Hills was actually pretty good. We loved the elevation and the lots weren't bad, it just didn't impress me the way Oran Park did. Basically all these places looked good, but for me OP ticked all the boxes. I want to be near trees, parks, and close to amenities.

Right away we fell in love with Oran Park. So much promise for the future, and aside from being so large, it looks as though it will have a great community feel. We were worried however that it may prove too expensive. Forgetting that Oran Park, unlike many other estates, offered $10,000 worth of rebates (based on meeting landscaping and design guidelines).

Initially we felt Spring Farm offered the best value for money. The Development company I work for has done a lot of work on Spring Farm, and for some reason that seemed to turn me off wanting to buy there (is that weird?). I was also a little unsure of the nearby tip, substations and amount of fill in the blocks. The land we were looking at also had a lot of fall. We hoped to find a block that was relatively flat.

Entrance to Oran Park

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