Searching & Researching

So now came the massive task of finding a block of land.

We found out pretty quickly that each piece of land had its own complications.

Most commonly:

• Trees (we would need permits to remove trees, therefore additional costs)
• Shape of block (many of the blocks where either very narrow or very wide limiting what we can/can't build)
• Slope on block (we found that anything slopping more than three metres was going to require a custom builder and a lot more money)
• Fire zone (all of the peninsula is considered a fire zone, the level of fire zone would determine how much more $$ it would cost to bring the house to the appropriate standard)

These were just a few things.

I was constantly reading the 'homeone' forum for information and reading blogs to get ideas and opinions.  On top of that I was making list of things that our potential house needed and therefore what kind of block would suit us.

The block we wanted should have all of these things:

• Size (at least 1000m2)
• Fairly flat (1-2M slope at most)
• Close to the beach (preferably walking distance)
• Closer to D's work (no more than a 20 minute drive)

After searching and researching we found two blocks that we liked.  Both fit our criteria in different ways and each block would require a completely different house.  

When I say different house, I mean that one block would suit a two story house and the other a single story.  This didn't really bother us because we were confident we would be able to find the right house plan to fit the block we chose.

A lot of people prefer to find the land to suit the house they like, but we really felt that the land was the biggest investment and therefore finding a piece of land that would really appreciate was very important to us.

So in the end we chose the biggest block, which also had amazing views of the bay and lucky for us was the cheapest.  It is also in the area I favour for schools the only down side is that it's 5 minutes further away from D's work compared to the other block but still 20ish minutes (not too bad).

Here is our block of land!!!!!