Tender Appointment

I'll start with the bad things: hopefully my experience can help someone who is going through a similar thing. At first we weren't supposed to even have a tender appointment only a contract appointment, as is the case with Access range homes. Luckily I was baffled to when we are supposed to tell pd about any structural changes we want for the house. Surely they will have some sort of appointment where rational people can add a door to their ensuit, right? nope! our very friendly and lovely sales consultant was suppose to ask us about these things, but didn't. We also found out at tender that he was suppose to tell us to get an electrical pit from overhead electricity as is the case with established neighborhoods.so after tender we contacted the electrical company and hopefully, fingers crossed, it will not delay our build for too long (if you have any questions on how to do it, let me know in the comments). I am now fretting to find out later that there are more things to get organized on our land regarding gas, phone, water etc. how can you tell if everything is connected to your land? The tender lady told us to just do the electricity and that everything else is probably connected, but who knows??

That's it with the bad things at tender, hopefully everything will be resolved soon.  

so........

The tender appointment is basically an appointment where you sit with someone that can do everything for you regarding changes either structural or from Wos. We came prepared with all the extra power points and windows and doors that we wanted. Make sure to have a list ready, I had a list on my phone that whenever I thought or read about something I should add I wrote it down because at tender you sign a contract that you will not be able to make any structural changes and if you do it will incur a fee.

The appointment starts with going over the final fees and then in more detail over the construction fees. our construction fees are a bit over 40k, the major thing is the slab upgrade which is 20k and local government and OHS fees of 16k, we were expecting to pay over 40k so we were happy that it wasn't over.

The final price, even though we will get the final numbers only at contract we have spent over 60k over the price of the house.  

Some of the things I decided not to get after all:  I decided not to have a ridiculously expensive integrated dishwasher and get a refund for the promotion one ($500 refund, that's pretty much it's retail value, I was very surprised). Instead I'll buy a white dishwasher post build that will go with my kitchen. I also decided not to have windows on my garage door, it's about $800 for a room I'm hardly going to use. 

It was a very confusing day and I am left with even more questions, if anyone has any advise on how to figure out if my lot is connected to phone or gas then please let me know.

BIG TIP: if you're building a kdr, PD usually charge you for extra things like road crossing management and extra for building in a high build up area- which is true if you're building on a main street but most often it adds up to thousands of dollars you shouldn't be spending. after or even during your tender call your local council and ask about these regulations and if they actually require these services and if not then ask PD to scratch it off the contract and refund you. Another case I heard about was of someone who negated the proximity of overhead electricity to load off area and was refunded over 5k!!! QUESTION EVERYTHING!

Can't wait to get to the building stage and just enjoy everything going up~