Buying the block

In January 2011, Ben and I, purchased a suburban block of land at Culburra Beach a 15 minute walk from the beach. We had long held the desire to design and build a house and had been looking for suitable blocks of land, then at the end of summer 2010 realised we had been looking in the wrong places and decided to look for something close to the beach.

We looked at maps and took exploratory trips down the NSW south coast. By winter 2010 we had decided that Culburra Beach was out first choice. It was about three hours from Sydney, had two beaches, a calm beach good for swimming as well as a surf beach, as well as a lake and a river. It also had some shops and good services, including an ambulance station, but we hope we will never need it.

Culburra Beach is a coastal town with housing of various ages and condition but little vacant land, particularly within our budget. We looked at doing a knock-down rebuild on a little old fibro shack, but this had double costs – you paid for a building you did not want then had to pay to remove it. Instead, we managed to find a battle axe block that was within our budget. The actual purchase took quite some time from the initial offer, but we were able to keep saving in the meantime.