The Carseldine Chase Estate is off Lacey Road, and the road you are looking at here is the same street where our block of land is located, and is called Raynbird Place.

Annie and I looked at land at Bridgeman Downs... 650m2 to 850m2, but expensive stupid convenants which added almost $90K to the price of the finished house.

Then Aspley, where house lots were only 550m2 to 600m2, in which we needed 700m2 and preferably 20m frontage by 35m length.

We tried Albany Creek, but the block need a lot of retainer walls, and was not well located.

We then found a very nice block of land at Eatons Hill, but it was very small also at 615m2. We thought at that stage we were building an Adenbrook home, and placed a deposit on this block. Later we found even there own house would not fit this block of land so we had to get our deposit back and look again.

We went to Warner and Warner Lakes and only found <700m2 blocks available, but a good price though!

We also went a little further west to Cashmere and found a very large block at 2600m2 with views to Morten Island, but it required at least $30K extra for retainer walls and earthworks.

We then tried Joyner, but the only blocks near 700m2 in size were hatched shaped block where our choice of house would not fit.

Well... we almost had given up at this stage as land was going through the roof in price, and availability was getting short. One night I came home and just browsed the internet, and the first builder I saw was Metricon Homes. Annie and I decided we were going to have a 4 bedroom home with study and media room, but it all needed to be one level. That way it was not dangerous for kids and steps, and also meant we could retire in this home if we needed to, although there is a retirement home across the street!

We then found the Carseldine Chase Estate which in the end was only a few hundred meters from where we first started looking! Our block was $248K, which in only 6 months has increased to more than $300K. Even though it sounded expensive, it is certainly worth more than that now! So far only one low set home has been built to the left of ours. The back fenceline is raised with a nice stone retainer wall of approx. 600-900mm.

 This is the modern retirement home across the road from us.