joseph_p

We bought a 3 bed 1 bath house in Alderley in 2003 and did some renovation to make it a 3 bed 2 bath. When the family grew and we could have used two more rooms (one more bedroom and a study) and an extra living area or two), we looked at our alternatives. One option was to sell (in 2010, our immediate neighbour with 3 bed 1 bath sold for about $650k) and buy the house that met our requirements. A neighbour’s house which met most of our needs sold at auction in late-2009 for almost $1m (we were outbid).

We considered the pros and cons of staying in Alderley, moving to a new house or building on our existing block of land.

We examined the benefits of living where we did in Alderley…
1. Transport - I work in the city and can take the train from the Alderley station (6 min walk or 3 min run). If there are any issues with the train, I can take the 345 express bus or the 343 super-express bus (which operates at peak hours and does not stop between Newmarket and the city) into the city and cultural centre.
2. Schools - My children go to Northside Christian College in Everton Park and to drop them off at school, my wife is going in the opposite direction to peak hour traffic, and can be at school 5-10mins after leaving home. Enoggera State School is a short walk away and I regularly see parents walking with their children to school. Everton Park State School is accessible from the bicycle path network
3. Traffic - My wife works part-time in Chermside and again her journey to and from work goes in the opposite direction to peak hour traffic.
4. Grinstead Park – has a fantastic kids playground with a big wooden fort structure, BBQ facilities which are clean and well maintained.
5. Bicycle Path Network - access to a bicycle path network that connects to over 40km of bicycle paths that would allow you to cycle to Redcliffe (I’ve only managed to cycle as far as Nudgee and under the new Gateway Motorway)
6. Shops – Bi-Lo (and at some point in the future Coles) and the local shops are easy to walk out to. If you jump in the car, Newmarket, Stafford and Brookside (which has Myers, Target, etc)
7. Food – within walking distance there is pizza or milk bar type food as well as Thai, Indian and Modern Australian. Within a 5-10min drive you can get as far north as Chermside or south to Brisbane CBD and all the food options contained therein.
8. Neighbours – the neighbours are friendly and we know most of our neighbours by name and it is nice to wave good-morning and greet each other by name as I walk to the train station. In our situation, we get along wonderfully with our neighbours, exchanging presents at Christmas and they take in our mail if we are away for
9. Nature – we have a big gum tree outside our house and there are lorikeets and we wake to bird song in the morning. In the evening we can see bats flying by the hundreds across the dusk sky. Other wild life include cockatoos, kookaburras and just the other day I saw a type of kingfisher.
10. Flood safe – in the recent 2011 floods, there was no water inundation in the suburb. A waterway was built after the 1974 flood (in 1974 water entered 50cm of the back boundary) to deal with excess water flow and since then our land has never been inundated.

When we considered all this, we decided to remove our existing home and build on our block of land. Effectively this meant eroding about $80-100k of equity but we decided to take a longer term view. Based on recent prices, if we were to sell today, I would be able to recoup the building costs and what I would have been able to sell the original house and land for had we not built. And we have now built our ideal home in the ideal street, in the ideal suburb, in the ideal capital city, in this lucky country.