Getting a house built

[Guest asylon]

Hello everyone,

Wondering if anyone has had experience of buying a plot of land and getting a house built. We are thinking along the lines of getting an architect and designing it to our spec, not just off plan, but that is also a possibility. Any ideas on pitfalls, costs, timescales, pros and cons. Would be glad to hear absolutely any views/advice

Thanks :notworthy:

A (going to Queensland)

[Guest dawn courage]

Hi, we are just about to embark on building our own place. Moved here last May (gold coast qld) and bought a place, selling this thursday and are buying a block of land 20km down the road. There are many develpoments that sell land only and you can then get an architect to design and go from there. You must be aware of the covenants, which will state the type of building you can put up, but on the whole they are much less fussy than UK planning. There are many building contractors who will then do the whole job for you, or you can do a short course at the tafe and get your owner builder license, this lets you become the main contractor and you can sub contract out all the trades. many people do this, many banks will not lend high percentages on this type of build, but some will.

we have just had our plans drawn and are awaiting a quote from builder, though we plan to source alot of the materials ourself. As rule of thumb cost works out between $850-$1400 per sqm depending on spec, you then add the cost of the land. average family home would be between 35-45 sqm, and in our area land prices start at around $220k.

Hope this helps. Good Luck Dawn

[Guest dawn courage]

time scales, timber or steel frame between 6-9mnths depending on area and weather. Builders are not too busy at present, but there is talk of an upward trend in all things housing, who knows! D

[Guest BullcreekBob]

As rule of thumb cost works out between $850-$1400 per sqm depending on spec, you then add the cost of the land. average family home would be between 35-45 sqm,

 

Wow !!!!

 

Over here in WA, an average house is around 200sqm. Our current house is 220sqm (4brm, 2 lounges, BIG kitchen, 2 bathrooms) and we were thinking that our next house would be bigger. There are only the two of us as well.

[Guest dawn courage]

Hi Bob, just designed mine, sounds like we may have gone abit OTT at 466, i am a mortgage broker too, do you work in a franchise ? Where did you come from in UK ?

[Guest Koala Konnection]

Hello everyone,

Wondering if anyone has had experience of buying a plot of land and getting a house built. We are thinking along the lines of getting an architect and designing it to our spec, not just off plan, but that is also a possibility. Any ideas on pitfalls, costs, timescales, pros and cons. Would be glad to hear absolutely any views/advice

Thanks :notworthy:

A (going to Queensland)

 

Hi Asylon

 

We kept a detailed report of our own house build. We kept a log on our web site and you can see what we went through from buying the land to completion of the build at http://www.koalakonnection.com.au/

 

The style of house is a "Queenslander", on posts high up in the air enabling cool air to circulate under the house and of course the use of the space under for a workshop, car storage, whatever. What the pictures don't show is that we've just had the underside concreted, as well as the steep driveway - just over 400 square metres of the stuff!

 

We've been in the house a little over a year now and we're very happy with it. During this time we've had another built - this one is a typical 4 bedroom/double garage investment property on a concrete slab up at Hervey Bay. It may come as a surprise to learn that they both took around a year to build, despite the slab design being off-plan. We designed the Queenslander ourselves.

 

Paul.