The Council is meant to give consent within 20 working days. After about 30 working days, we had a request for further information... There's no penalty in the Building Act for not complying with that deadline, so what can you do? And, like everyone else in Dunedin it seems, we had submitted our application on 30 June - the day before a large increase in consent prices. Understandably the Council must have been swamped, and we saved about $2,000 by doing that, so we will not complain too loudly!
We were at the bank eight days after landing back in NZ (Regan was not allowed to get jet lag), and they had confirmed within two days (so we had confirmation on 18 September). This was almost a shock to Taryn, who was half expecting to be told that it was too expensive and that we would have to go back to square one again - which would be pretty difficult to cope with. So we are two pretty happy people!
The site is a new subdevelopment called Mission Cove in MacAndrew Bay, Dunedin. I might do some more information on the area later, but for now the picture next to this will give you some idea of its situation. In the red section to the left, you might be able to just make out three "sold" signs. Our section is not marked "sold" (must be an old map), and is the one that would fill in the square if you imagine there being four sold sections together (so it is on the curve of the road).
The section is just over 680 square metres, and there is vacant farmland behind it. Nobody else in the subdivision has started building yet, which will make us feel as though we are living quite rurally.
Regan went down to the section for a look around on Saturday, 19 September and was astounded to discover that the excavator had already been in and done the initial scrape off! He was only confirmed on the job on 18 September, and we were not expecting the scrape off until next week-end. So we are now officially underway! The section is actually slightly bigger than it looks in the picture, as the scrape off needs to move a little to the left - it is currently conflicting with the building line. Our builder is going to come in in the next week or so to mark out the house.
Zaha and Taryn checking out the scrape off.
And so you have an idea of what is going to go on top of all of this, here is a preliminary 3D image:
