Browse Forums General Discussion 1 Mar 20, 2010 11:15 pm I am a new in property market and bought a residential land in Canberra Gungahlin region. The land price is still affordable which has 500 sqm size with the price of $200K. As my land will not be ready to settle until the second half the year, I now go to display home in different Canberra new suburb to have some idea about the design, style and most important, the cost of building a home. And guess what? I was so superise about how greedy and outrageous of the building cost charged by Canberra builders to local people. For example, for a double story home, looking about 220sqm, 4 beds, 2 bath, double garage (inclusive of Garage), the start price is around $340K. This price does not include any flooring or front landscaping cost, which you have to end up to pay about more than $20K on top of the start price, also, there may be lots of things not in the standard inclusion list, e.g. gas cook top, change ceiling height from 2.4m to 2.7m, etc. Which means at last you probably look at to pay $360k-$380k. That is about $1400 - $2000 per sqm !!!!!!!! Ok, at the mean time I surf many builders' website from Sydney and Melbourne, and still the above house package, start price from $230K-$240K, and with all the upgrades, flooring and front landscaping, total price just over $250K. Example like one of my friend in Melbourne just signed contract with his builder, total area of 358 sqm and total price only $320K, that is about [b]$900 - $1000 per sqm[/b] !!!!!!!!!!! So how come Canberra builders can charge 50%-100% higher than Sydney or Melbourne builders? Anyone know the reason? DO NOT TELL ME IT IS BECAUSE THE DIFFERENT BUILDING REGULATION FROM STATE TO STATE. Sorry about the gossip as I feel so angry about the Canberra builders. Rumours I heared before was builders in Canberra make $180K profit from each home they build, I think this should a much higher margin than Sydney and Melbourne. My final comment: anyone saw this post and is going to build their Australian dream in Canberra, let us work out something together just being not to ripped off by the local builders. If we can put our block of land together and attract some Sydney builder to Canberra to build for us, even there is many additional cost e.g. transportation, I think it is still worth to try and save money. Re: Why building a home in Canberra is so expensive 3Mar 21, 2010 9:23 pm we are extending and people keep asking why we didn't just knock down re-build and it was much dearer. The prices are crazy, I think you also have to do a owner builder course to get a licence also- and then trying to get anyone to turn up to quote is a nightmare. the larger building companies class canberra as rurual in their pricing zones so that bumps the price up and it is also the whole supply and demand thing. We have friends in Melbourne who have done both a new build and reno and they are blown away by the prices I tell them we are paying for things here. It is very annoying, because the crazy prices restricts you from doing great stuff Re: Why building a home in Canberra is so expensive 4Jun 14, 2010 12:41 pm Not only are the Canberra builders taking everyone for a ride on price per sqm most are very ordinary in quality. When we were in Sydney moving to Canberra I did some research and of the builders who started in Canberra and had expanded to Sydney the Canberra price for the same house was a minimum of $90,000 more and most were around $110 to 125K more... for the same house. We ended up going with G. J. Gardner in Nowra who have given us a good price and the inspections we did on their frames and partially built houses came up excellent. They have been very accommodating in customising our home, very. The plans are nearly out of council. Cheers, Darth Teddy Bear Re: Why building a home in Canberra is so expensive 5Jun 14, 2010 7:49 pm It is a small market, plain and simple. The builders have a captive audience (not as competitive) and can't benefit as greatly from volume selling as they do in other major capitals so they sell at a premium price. They may make a lot more per house than they do in Sydney, but I'm guessing they don't build anywhere near as many houses. Re: Why building a home in Canberra is so expensive 7Jun 17, 2010 5:27 am I would like to know why the price of construction has gone up so much over the past 10 years. Built my house, 12squares+double garage in 2000 for a contract price of $101,000, now same sized place you would be looking at double the cost. With inflation etc I can understand maybe a $50k increase in 10 years, but not a doubling of costs. Wow I hadn't realised things had gotten that pricey in just a couple of years since I built, that is crazy with how much land is now costing if you aren't lucky enough to… 3 7053 6 11528 That sucks! Hope it all works out. Good to move away from steel anyway for all your reasons, but it's also thermally poor. 16 17774 |