Hi all,

I recently purchased some land at The Ponds in Sydney for $360K. My partner and i would like to keep the total value of the house to $600K or under. I was wondering if there are any homes out there that we could build which meet the following specifications:

- $240K final price with some decent inclusions
- Double Story
- 4 Bedrooms
- Decent Sized Alfresco

Is the above achievable with any of the reputable builders or am i dreaming?

Thanks for your help.

Dreaming, IMHO; sorry.
If you go for the most basic of houses & limit yourself to NOTHING extra you might be able to pull it off. Go into it pessimistically & expecting nothing; you may be surprised, but I don't think it'll happen by the time you include all the site-costs etc.

Dreaming.... Even if you did single!

Our base is way more than that, and we don't even have an alfresco. I think it would be a hard ask for a decent sized one-storey, not to mention decent inclusions.

Ok thanks for the responses. What about at $290 - $300K taking the total to $650-660k?

Do you have your heart set on a 2 storey? It really adds to the price. We're only doing it for resale value as every new home here (Sydney's North Shore) seems to be one and we don't know how long we'll stay. I personally would have a loved an expansive one storey with an alfresco area. Maybe a one-storey for McDonald Jones homes? (I used to work for a supplier) and I was told MJH designs cater more to first home buyers (I am not 100% sure of their price points though as they don't build in our area).

Don't MJH & Eden Brae aim fairly high in the project-home market?

I think it'd have to be a Clarendon, Masterton or Sekisui (or similar) ... maybe M3tr1c0n? ... and avoid any extras. About the cheapest base prices I saw were Sekisui, at around the $200k mark, but I don't know if you could get away with only an extra $100k with those.

Not sure about now, but when we started looking MJH were definitely geared towards first home buyers, which is why they didn't build in our area. We also looked at M@stert0n and they didn't seem that cheap to me (unless you're comparing them to private builders of course). As for M3tric0n, well our $260K proposition is now a $460K build with no alfresco!

What about Allc@stle?

Nothing seemed cheap to me, particularly if you have something you actually want.
If you're willing to settle for anything, ie. all you want is a house & don't care much about what it is, then maybe you can get away with someone like Masterton or Sekisui (how come M3tr1c0n is a swear-word but Masterton isn't?!) and not add any extra stuff?

*edit*
Allcastle do publish a price-list, here ... there're some houses there that might squeeze in if the site-costs can be completely minimized.

The beechwood genesis prices are way cheaper than all the others mentioned here. We got a base model beechwood and upgraded it heavily. Been happy with the results.
You can get their prices off the shelf at Homeworld 5. They don't do a two-storey Genesis series though, as cheap homes aren't two stories...
Pretty sure the base price of a standard Verdelho is around $168K, add about $20-30K site costs and other stuff, and you are about $200K or so.

You will get a mac jones house which will be 4 bedrooms, study and alfresco for less than $300k but it will be close. Remember with the large builders you will roughly $100k over the base price.

Just had a thought. You may get a Rawson house for less than $300k and they are double storey. Here is a link to their benham brochure

http://m.rawsonhomes.net.au/assets/property/brochures/Benham-ds-2013.pdf

If you look at one of the smaller benhams, still have 4 bedrooms and alfresco. Not sure of the price, you would have to check, but Rawson's inclusions are very good

We are building a Benham 29 (which is their 2nd smallest version of the home) with Rawson in THE PONDS and so far, so good.
Since you are talking double storey, I'm sure there are plenty of builders out there who have small narrow block inexpensive homes, but for $240 they would be very small indeed.
Everyone has different preferences and requirements when it comes to inclusions and when we started looking at various builders, we found it a bit like comparing mobile phone plans. We actually set up a spreadsheet listing who had what and in which offer and ended up getting 3 tenders before we decided on Rawson.
This is mainly due to us building for the first time and not wanting any $ surprises or dealing with quality issues.
We just had an independent building inspector go through the house with a magnifying glass and checking the roof with powerful binoculars and he found......wait for it: No defects. Sure a few minor things that need to be completed here and there and a bit of mortar that needs to be cleaned up, but that was it! We're not too far away from lockup.
PM me if you have any further questions re Wisdom/Rawson/Masterton/Eden Brae/Casaview or Provincial.

Slightly off topic duesseldorf67, but who was the independent inspector you used?

[quote="mercthunder"]Hi all,

I recently purchased some land at The Ponds in Sydney for $360K. My partner and i would like to keep the total value of the house to $600K or under. I was wondering if there are any homes out there that we could build which meet the following specifications:

- $240K final price with some decent inclusions


Take a look at Clarendon's Domaine range of homes as I found them to be the best price and value. I am building the Sheridan 35 and will end up spending about $320k not including tiles downstairs and carpet upstairs but we bought tiles at a clearance place for $1100 and will get them laid for under $4k. Carpet is cheaper also to do yourself after handover as we saved $2500 on the carpet to have the same company do the same carpet after we get the keys rather than prior. Driveway at the ponds is about $7700.00. We also got quite a lot of upgrades including increasing 2 bedrooms upstairs and 1 room downstairs, an alfresco, gloss kitchen and island bench ends, Increased kitchen wall cupboard height and added a bulkhead and also increased ceiling height. We also upgraded our bricks to expensive smooth faced ones which was also another $7500.00.

We are building quite a large 2 story home but there are much smaller ones that they have and I am sure you could do it for around $290k if you don't upgrade bricks and are smart with what you choose to do now and then upgrade yourself later. For example, you can save money on downlighs by paying for the batons only where you want to place the downlights later on and then do that yourself when you can afford it. We upgraded the front door to the 1200 wide wood/glass with the pull handle which are $2k. Ask them to give you credits on the crappy Bellini products and buy the kitchen appliances from 2nds world for half of what the upgrade will cost you. The tiles are a decent range so you wont need to spend much at your tiling appointment. We did some tiling upgrades but only on the kitchen splashback and asked for bathroom tiles to be 1.2m high. We took the basic range which were really nice anyhow.

just like you my hubby and I started out on a budget and after comparing everything to save as much money as possible with upgrading some things now and some over the next few years. As an example of the price differences, we got a quote from Wisdom for a single story which came back at $305k and Clarendons huge double story came back at $291k. You CAN do a double for the same price as a single which is what we have proven.

At the end of the day you can spend and push the costs higher but walk in with a plan of what you will be willing to live with and live without for now and try and stick to it!

I think a double story for that price would be asking too much, but a single story you could get. We are building with Plantat!on/Henley, and we're getting a 25 square single story 4+2 house for $230k including upgrades and add-ons.

Best of luck!