Tales From the Box

Much like some weird mating ritual, we have now entered a bizarre house plan approval ‘dance’ with our local council. Our house plans are finalised, and are currently lodged to be approved. We have to go through a few stages of this – with bushfire regulations to be adhered to. Then comes the building construction certificate, and regular council building inspections. Nothing out of the ordinary – but we have the added steps of the bank [cue dramatic music]. Because we are looking to refinance our loan (even when interest rates look like they will be rising soon) we have to go through the home evaluating process to see if the equity in what we plan to do.

Its hard if extending our place is the right thing to do, especially when we are expecting to stay in our current place for at least 10 years, and we aren’t looking at investment as the primary reason for doing this. But locally (in a far inferior yet scarily close suburb) some of the drop off in prices have been vast. Its hard feeling exciting doing the work to the house, when universally, the recent housing rise looks to be going the other way.

But the plans are pretty sexy….