Selecting our turf

Having decided that west was the way to go, we had to consider which of the various developments would meet our requirements.

We eventually came across an estate in which new land was being released. The estate itself ticked most of our boxes, so we spent some time at the land sales office and selected a block.



Because the land had just been released for sale, titling was a few months away, and we couldn't actually see the land in front of us. We chose a block 'off the plan' and it was in one of the initial release stages, and it fronted on to one of the main access roads to Point Cook and Hoppers Crossing. There was a nature strip directly in front of the block, which we thought would provide a sufficient barrier between the house and the main road.

Over the next few weeks (or possibly months) we thought more and more about how busy that main road would eventually become, and decided to revisit the land sales office to see if there was something else that would suit us. An important tip here is to make sure that the section of land you are looking at will last you as long as you want to live in that property.

We ended up changing our block to another one in the same estate, but a couple of streets back. As a bonus, this new block fronted on to a small water feature within the estate. We signed on the dotted line for this one, and settled in February 2012 (several months after we put our deposit down).

The estate is about 24km from Melbourne CBD, but that does mean negotiating traffic over the West Gate Bridge to get to and from work. We'll cross that bridge (literally) when we get there. In the mean time, we hope that the new Williams Landing train station (currently under construction, with a planned completion date of December 2012) will provide some relief.