Servicing Your Vacant Stand.
Please keep in mind that you have to budget for servicing the bill from the local council and body corporate or home owners association (if any) on your stand, even though there are no improvements on it yet. As soon as the stand is registered in your name, you are liable for paying the rates and taxes and any levies, no matter how long you take to start building on it.
Consider the following, when searching for the perfect stand on which to build your dream home:
- Check the title deed to make sure that there is no building or zoning restrictions that would hamper your dreams, or servitudes that are registered against the property for road widening, road access or other factors that may affect the resale value of your property.
- The stand should be in a proclaimed township, so that you have the availability of essential local authority services, i.e. water and electricity, sanitation, refuse removal and so on,
as well as telephone lines and postal deliveries. - Is the size and shape of the stand adequate to fulfil your needs?
- The stand should be easily accessible.
- Levelling and excavating can be very expensive. Make sure the stand is easy to build on.
- Clay soil may need the services of an engineering design specialist to ensure that the structures will be stable. This could become expensive.
- It is easy to pick up structural problems on a house that has already been built, but there are very few clues indicating future problems when buying an empty stand.
- A sloping site will either improve drainage or cause your stand to get flooded.
- Will the home you intend to build be within the style and value range of homes in the area?
- You don't want to over-capitalise in the future when adding to or altering your home. Ensure that there is scope for you to be able to do that.
- Keep in mind the view that you will have, once your home is built as well as what that view might be in 5 or 10 years' time. Watch out for open land around you. Your view may be blocked by taller buildings in the future.
- Will you have the privacy you require?
- You may want to do a survey of the neighbourhood to ascertain whether the stand is close to shops, schools, whether you will battle to get to and from highways in peak hour traffic and so on.