Hi Jason,

Is the home already almost complete? Or are you choosing a block of land and then a particular house plan to go on the block?

I have purchased 2 house and land packages – both in Brisbane. The first home had the frame up when we put down a deposit. The second home was 95% completed when we paid our deposit. So I am only familiar with house and land packages where you see almost the completed product.

In my experience:

1. Settlement date – the builder or the agent acting on behalf of the builder should be able to give you a good indication of the finish date. However, they did note to us that there could be delays with completing the home.

2. Can’t really answer this as we were able to settle on time in both cases. Especially for the second home we purchased, the house was already 95% completed, so the indicated finish date had to be fairly accurate. If your house has not been started, then I would imagine there is a likely chance there could be a delay eg. lots of rainy weather could cause delay, or Council approvals can be delayed, all of which can delay the settlement date. Some builders (eg. Adenbrook), I believe guarantee their finish dates.

3. In my two purchaes, yes there was a cooling off period. I thought by law, all contracts for purchase of homes are subject to a cooling period (I could be wrong about this?). However, note that if you do back out of the purchase, there is apparently still some penalty involved during cooling off period. The penalty should be mentioned in the contract you sign.

4. Unfortunately, in my cases, both builders would not negotiate on price. We were a bit suprised but also found out that others that purchased in the area also had to pay the full advertised price. At least with the second house and land package, there was a stamp duty rebate on offer at the time which saved us several thousands.

5. Steps involved:
After finding the house and land package and deciding to go ahead, the steps then involved:
1. Got pre-approval for finance
2. Sign contract and pay deposit (5%-10% deposit). Contracts were subject to finance and building/pest inspection
3. Signed contracts were forwarded to solicitor and relevant searches were carried out.
4. Got finance approved after providing bank with the signed contract.
5. Builder notifies us that house is completed.
6. Building/pest inspection carried out (Bank may also need to carry out inspection if finance is subject to valuation of home)
7. Provide builder with building/pest inspection report – builder to fix up any problems outlined in the report.
8. Settlement date arrives – solicitor handles the transfer. You go and collect keys.

Hope the above info helps. Good luck with your purchase.