Council. I think.

I believe our plans are now with Lake Macquarie Council. That is, I received the quote from the geotechnic mob and paid them on Mon 17th. The draftsman told me the next day she'd heard from them that the plans were prettily stamped and ready to collect. She said she'd do that and get them into Council. Given it's nearly 2 weeks since then I think we can safely assume this has been done. It takes around 6 weeks so we should get the ok by the end of Feb/early March.

In the meantime, we have asked our agent to advise our tenants that we'll need to sell our Blue Mountains home at some stage this year in order to fund this grand project. Ideally it'd be great if the tenants were interested in purchasing the house. They told us when they moved in that whenever we sold they'd like first right of refusal. So, I need to write to them and ask. Their lease runs until Oct so we asked our agent to let them know that they are free to find alternate accommodation any time (that is if they don't want to buy it) and we will release them from the agreement and ask just a months notice. If this happens, we'll probably move back there for a while and do some repairs etc. You know, make sure it is shown to potential buyers in all it's glory. Not that our tenants haven't been keeping it well. They are fantastic tenants. The reports I hear from our agent and our neighbours are all glowing. We'd just not want to be showing the house empty and there are a few minor things that need doing and it's easier to plod away at this while living there. Anyway, without going into all the boring details of our decision making, suffice it to say we may yet have another winter in the mountains ahead of us and I can't say I'm not mildly excited by the prospect. Love the Mountains!

You Gotta Love Council!

Heard from our draftsman today. She received the plans back all stamped and ready from the mine subsidance board and went on Monday with our cheque in hand to council to lodge our request for a DA. Got there to discover that council has decided to introduce a new checklist of requirements since she was last there to lodge a DA request for someone - just a couple of days before Christmas. They now need a shadow diagram - easy, draftsman went back and did that - and as our site is affected by Geotechnical zones it needs an endorsement from someone to confirm that with it being on a slope, the house won't slide down the hill. As with the mine subsidance thingy, the entire development has already been checked and approved and endorsed by someone but now council wants each site endorsed again seperately. Good if you are the company that got paid by the developers to sus out the whole site and now are going to get paid again by each separate applicant who wants to build on one of these endorsed sites to have it re-endorsed. $450 a pop, no less. Great. Draftsman will orgnise that today and hopefully be ready once again to pay a visit to council on Friday. Hopefully they've not introduced a new, new checklist by then!