Thornton Release has Come and Gone

There was a property release at Thornton in Penrith last week and officially distributed from Saturday onwards. Let me tell you about my experience in it. 

Though I thought I was registered via email for the release information, I did NOT receive any emails regarding the release. To my knowledge, the information about the release went out last Tuesday (24th of April). We only found out about this because my wife browsed the site and found new information about the new release properties. 

From what we saw, we only liked one of the properties. It was advertised as $628k which is quite close to our maximum and possibly would not have left us much room for add-ons. It was a zero corner lot courtyard house. It had two storeys house and a detached double garage. Four bedrooms were situated at the top floor, although the sizes of the rooms were quite small while enough living spaces were allocated for the bottom floor. 

I was only able to visit the sales office on Wednesday. Obviously expecting that the main bulk of the tickets would have already been distributed on Tuesday. For those who are inexperienced with the way Landcom releases its land these days, they now give out priority tickets to would be "campers" at every stage release. In a way this reduces the hazardous nature of camping outside an office building with little to no shelter against the elements. 

This ticket is then used on the Saturday release to prioritise the customers as they select their property preferences. Obviously, the customer needs to be present on the opening time to keep their ticket valid as it will be voided if they are not present during their "turn". 

At this point, our finances still haven't been finalised so I only came to see how the uptake of tickets went to get a feel for the demand in the area. I arrived there to find two customers in line, waiting for the office to open. This was around 9.14 AM in the morning. One of the people in line told me that the office will open at 10.00. As I had two children with me, I didn't think it was a good idea to stay in line until opening time. 

The weekend came and went. I was able to call the office on Monday the 31st of March. I was surprised that the property we had "liked" was still on the market. After this call, I had a chat with my wife to discuss the possibility of reserving this property. However, we assessed our position and deemed that we are not in a hurry, so we did not proceed with reserving the property. 

The process in which the properties are built in the Thornton estate allows for little flexibility in the choice of structural elements. This is one thing we would like to have control in. After this release, Thornton probably slid down to a slightly more distant 2nd place compared with our now favourite, Mulgoa Rise. 

I still do not understand why a government run company such as Landcom creates the false market of scarcity in their land developments. If people are there who require land, shouldn't the government try to help them? Shouldn't the government allow people to help themselves instead of discouraging them and pushing them towards a welfare payment mentality? But I guess this political view is the subject of another blog.