Good as Gold - Michaela's subdivision story

Michaela works in administration. However, she is not your ordinary office worker. For a start, she flies to work and then she flies home a week later.

She works 90+ hours between flights. It’s not an admin job for the faint-hearted . . . it’s one for the adventurous.

“I work at one of the most remote mine sites in the country” says Michaela, “as administrators we do everything from accounts and HR, to auditing the mine camp and airstrip inspections, I love it – it beats working 9 to 5 that’s for sure.”

It was this intrepid spirit that saw Michaela recently complete her first investment build. “I decided to sell my house at Holden Hill and move back to the same place where I have fond memories of growing up with my dad, brother and late mother. I approached my dad with a cheeky offer.”

Dad had outgrown the house and was ready to move, Michaela proposed they re-develop the site – knock down the old home and build a duplex. She would fund the build, live in one of the homes and sell the other on his behalf.

She set to the task of obtaining sub-division approval. “Initially everything seemed to be straight forward – the house was a knock down and the council agreed to my plans for redevelopment, but choosing a builder wasn’t so easy.”

Michaela visited a lot of display villages and spoke to a lot of salespeople. Her subdivision was 700m2 so she needed a design that fitted onto two 350m2 allotments – not that difficult, you would have thought.

“My problem was that I didn’t like any of the standard designs I saw and very few builders were willing to modify them. Being in the Burnside Council area, there were strict guidelines that had to be adhered to.”

Eventually, a friend suggested Michaela talk to Fairmont Sales Consultant, Michael Underwood.

“By this stage, I’d drawn up my own floorplan. So when I saw Michael, I asked him straight up if they could build my design.

He agreed, but it had to be drawn up properly and Michael assisted me with modifications for any compliance issues.”

“In the end my development project with Fairmont Homes worked out really well. They were very accommodating throughout the process. After a few initial setbacks with terrible weather, it only took eight months to build the homes. I was so happy with the build process – the site manager was brilliant – and the end result was exactly how I pictured it. I’m really happy and proud of what I have achieved.”

“What really impressed me about Fairmont Homes was that they could build it for substantially less than anything I’d been quoted elsewhere.”

Michaela moved into her home in May 2016. After completing the landscaping, the other house was sold and settled by November.

“It’s so good to be living here and there are many people who helped me achieve this... my dad, for allowing me to do this, my brother, for sharing his home with me during the build and a whole lot of friends who supported me.”

Contemporary in design, Michaela’s duplex homes are 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a study and a large open-plan living area out the back.