Visiting display homes

Okay.. so off we went to the display homes and back in May 09', there were 6 builders building new homes at Aurora (Simonds, Burbank, JGKing, Zuccalla, Timeless, Orbit). Home and Land packages offered at Aurora back then were advertised as starting from $299k, however we soon found out that prices have slowly crept up since 2007 and we would be looking at a minimum of $320k and we would only be able to build a 170m2 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom and 1 car garage single storey townhouse on a small 250m2 block of land. That was not what we expected at all and was actually rather disappointed as we were looking at mid sized homes with "a bit" of land for around $300k. I guess we found out that homes at Aurora are affordable, but not that affordable!!

We went and looked at the 3 bedroom townhouses on offer anyway and although they were on narrow blocks of land, the builders surprised us with their very creative 6 star energy efficient home designs, and most of the townhouses although pretty narrow, were fairly deep and have high ceilings to not make them too costraphobic. Most townhouses still had ample outdoor entertainment areas. However, they still weren't quite the "Australian Dream" we had hoped for, so off we went to look at other bigger display homes, hoping to find one that would fit into our budget.

The next display homes we visited were by JG King, the biggest builder of steel frame homes and they had 2 double storey houses on display at Aurora. Now these were starting to look more like it, but we then soon realised it would cost over $420k to build one of these double storey homes on a 450m2 block of land. JG King were able to build many other single storey home designs at the Aurora estate for under $400k but they had no displays for us to view, so we left JG King feeling yet a little disappointed as there was a special promotion going on at that time.

Zuccalla Homes was next and beside it was Simonds Homes. Both these builders have at least 40 years of building history and their home designs for the Aurora estate were mid-large size single storey 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom, double garage, 240m2 homes meant for blocks of land with at least 16m frontage. We walked into the Zuccalla Galleria first and it was a nice home. It had a fairly spacious feel to it and was the sort of home we were probably looking for. The only gripe we had was that the master bedroom was right up the front of the house meaning it was next to front entry. Some people like that for security reasons apparently but we feel that it limits privacy and its not always nice having guests come through the front entry and be immediately greeted by the master bedroom. Otherwise, the floorplan was pretty contemporary and not much you could fault.

The following and probably last display home we visited put the Zuccalla Galleria back in its place though. Simonds had the Lumino on display, which they say was a house designed specifically for the environmentally conscious Aurora Estate. It was comparable in size to the Galleria with both around 240m2 in size, and both having 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a double garage. The biggest difference was in design and the use of space, which you immediately notice when you walk into the Lumino. The Lumino display home oozed a bit more flare as well by having a lot of "non-standard" touches.

What sold us though was the actual floorplan or design of the home which was designed to maximise natural light so straight away you would notice lots of glass spanning from the lounge room to the main living room. The lounge room was the first thing welcoming us when we stepped through the front door and the master bedroom was not up the front of the house! Perfect! All bedrooms in fact were nicely concealed, up the back of the house, away from a large family living area and open kitchen. There were also 2 outdoor entertainment areas due to the smart floorplan, and there was also a little private outdoor area in the master bedroom. If there was one thing we could have changed at no-cost (dream on i know..), it would have been the ensuite. The shower area could be bigger but being petite asians i am sure we will fit no problems :)






*This is a draft floorplan of the Simonds Lumino. Stay tuned for Part 3...