Your home should be about enriching the daily experience. – Kevin McCloud, Grand Designs
You may think we simply build houses with bricks and mortar. But to achieve exceptional, life changing results for our clients, we delve much deeper than that. We want to know what makes you tick.
Here at Ross North Group, we ask the big questions. Who are you? What stage of life are you in? Where and how do you want to live your life?
Meet Susan (48).
She’s in cruise control. Her three busy teenage kids are becoming easier to manage and are halfway out the door as they reach for their independence. Her career is stable and she and her husband have never been in a better financial position. The chaotic decades of childrearing, career building and wealth accumulation have receded. Life is like slipping on a pair of old jeans every morning: they’re comfortable but they’re also starting to look pretty worn.
Susan has started to think, maybe, just maybe, it’s time for ME. She’s pondering questions she hasn’t asked in a long time, like:
- What makes me happy?
- How can I spend less time working and more time living?
- Where and how do I want to live?
With kids on the cusp of leaving home, Susan is contemplating her long-held desire for a tree-change. Downsizing or, more accurately, resizing her home to fit her life dovetails with her desire to live more sustainably. The tantalising prospect of building means she can have her dream house.
While the property may be a little bigger than her current compact suburban block, her passive solar designed home will likely be smaller in footprint, perhaps three bedrooms and two bathrooms. She has a budget that can cater to her discerning tastes so the home will have high specifications, including green systems like solar panels, greywater and a small rainwater tank to reticulate her beautiful garden and organic vegie patch. Maybe she’ll even buy a couple of happy hens to scratch around under the fruit trees!
Building or buying a home is one piece in a much larger puzzle called “Your Life”. There are few greater emotional and financial commitments you’ll make than home ownership. For that reason it’s crucial to explore the drivers behind the endless choices and decisions you’ll make along the way.
We are all individuals with different desires, needs and resources but often we tread a similar path through life. One well-worn trail takes us out from under our parents’ roof to years of renting before making that exciting and scary leap, stretching our resources and reaching for home ownership. And through all that and well beyond, life happens.
There are a myriad of triggers for wanting or needing to change your home environment, such as:
- Moving from renting to home ownership
- Job/career change
- Establishing or ending a business
- Commencing or returning to study
- Following your passions, hobbies and interests
- Financial changes – loss or gain of wealth
- Marriage, divorce, separation
- Starting a family or kids leaving home
- Care for elderly parents
- Health issues
There are few greater impacts on your day-to-day life than a change of home. Where and how you live affects your lifestyle, finances, health (emotional, mental and physical), work and relationships, to name a few.
Location and good design
Even before walking inside your home, its location says a lot about you. Do you love the urban life, where strolling from your apartment to your buzzing local main street on Saturday mornings for coffee and the paper has become a sacred ritual? Does the siren song of a kookaburra in the bush call to you, surrounded by acres of space and trees? Perhaps you love the community life of a suburban cul-de-sac where everyone knows everyone and street parties are common fixtures.
You don’t have to be a Feng Shui master to know that good design plays an important role in affecting your mood, health, productivity and overall wellbeing. As such, it’s often one of the key triggers for wanting to change your home environment. Design is so much more than an open plan living room or a well-placed lamp. At its most fundamental, good design considers light and shade, temperature, mass and space, orientation, views and purpose. Design is a reflection of your lifestyle, but at its best, it can act as a daily inspiration.
Whatever your lifestyle, the location and design of your home are arguably the two most important things to get right as they will have a significant impact on your life.
Meet Joel (24).
Joel loves to surf and cook; he’s a passionate musician who enjoys tinkering (in his shed, if he had one). In the distant future he’d like to have a family but right now he’s far more interested in going out with his friends, which sometimes hurts his back pocket.
A recent engineering graduate, Joel is working in his first career job. He and his girlfriend are renting and saving hard for their first home. They currently rent a tired, dark two bedroom duplex with a tiny brick paved courtyard, a single carport and almost no storage. They long for a property with more space, modern open plan living, a shed and an easy care backyard.
While fun loving and carefree, Joel is also practical and motivated with a strong desire to stop renting, own his own home and invest in his future financial freedom. His single mum is a project manager who taught him the value of working hard and being prudent. He knows he needs to balance his desire to live near the beach with financial realities and commuting to work.
With his Mum’s encouragement and help, Joel is considering building in a new northern, beachside suburb, like Alkimos. He’s started doing research into different areas, looking at land, and is also considering house and land packages as a viable option.
In his 40 years in the business of changing lives, Ross North has seen it all. He understands more than most the drivers behind changing your home and the commitment required to execute it.
“Buying or building a home is a momentous decision and one that we never take lightly in this business. For many, it will be the biggest financial commitment they will ever make and it’s always deeply personal. That’s why we have tailored our business through the Ross North Homes, Complete Homes and Ross North Developments brands to cater to all aspiring homeowners across the spectrum.
The next article in this three-part series will explore the age-old question of “To build or to buy?” It will guide you through the decision-making process, discuss the benefits of building and provide some interesting commentary from Ross North on demographics, trends and affordability in today’s market.
