Knockdown & Rebuild vs Renovation

Seem expensive to cost 800-900k for a small block of land. Make sure u get few more quotes.

Sure thing. Thanks for your feedback. One company did give a rough starting point of about $700k. But the other two said about $800k-900k would probably be more 'reasonable'.

Ideally, the house should have 6 bedrooms and 3-5 wet areas (bathrooms/ensuites/shower/powder room). That's the aim anyway.

Will keep you all posted.

I agree $800k - $900k seems expensive for a 40/45 sq home.

Whilst I'm sure it can be easy to spend that much, if you want to upgrade everything to luxury standards, or wish to choose a completely bespoke and custom build. But if you go with a volume builder, a 40/45 sq home would probably have a base price of around $400k. Add on 50% for upgrades and another $20k for your knockdown, electricity pit and other odds and sods, and you'll still get a decent house for $200k less than what you've been quoted.

Do the volume builders not have any designs that you like? Or does your wedge shaped block need a fully custom build?

You're right in that that quotes aren't from volume builders. The quotes (or at this stage estimates) are from custom home builders.

From what we've seen of volume builders that we are aware of:

1. The bigger homes require a bigger frontage (i.e. >= 10m). Our frontage is less than that. It's about 9m or so.
2. Based on that, we can't really 'plonk' the plans that we've seen.
3. From what we've seen, all the bigger plans are rectangular. To maximise our block, we need something that's kinda "L" shaped.
4. The bigger floor plans also have ensuites in every room. This is not something that we want.
5. We also want 2 bedrooms with ensuites downstairs. And again, none of the plans I've seen caters for this.
6. That and the previous point means 'significant' changes as we would naturally like to use those spaces differently.

Rightly or wrongly, we think a custom build will better maximise our block. But if there's an opportunity to save 200k and get what we want, I'm all for it. So if there's any recommendation of volume builders that I should check out, do let me know.

Thanks again in advance.

I went to englehart display, their starting price is 1.2 mill and most of their clients are Chinese. Has any one build with them? Their home is beautiful, but too expensive for me.


Be careful if u go for small custom builder, I heard some of them take your money then later declare bankrupt. Volume builder is safe, at least u definitely will get a hose at the end, but they are not flexible with their floor plan.

How much do you want to spend on the building cost? Don't forget the landscape cost.

BTW, what is the value of your land? If you spend 800-900k on building, add on to the land value, would it be over value? Assuming the land value is 800k, and you spend 800k on building a house, do u think the house would worth 1.6mill?

Have u try highview home? Their houses are beautiful, they do custom home and they are not volume builder, from what I can remember , the guy told me to build a double story house starting price is 400,000, but that figure is few yrs ago.

Hi Mscat.

I've come across Englehart in my initial searches but not Highview home. With regards to Highview home, as lovely as it is, it doesn't suit us. What I mean is that we prefer a more modern/contemporary looking house. We like to look at the Victorian / Hampton style homes but not live in one. I did see they have a petite version .

Another thing that we want to try and do is not to stand out as much as possible. Our current estate hosts the modern townhouse brick-render look. Say if we opt for Highview, we would immediately be a standout - due to such a stark contrast.

So that narrows the companies we communicate with.

Regarding overcapitalisation, that's a great point. I need to look up our rates to see the land value. But that aside, in our conversations we are pretty convinced that if we do KDR on this site, we will leave it only when carted out in a box. Sure things change, and life doesn't always go the way we expect.

That being the case, we are trying to ensure that whatever we are building, will be an easy sell as well. Work in progress definitely but it's a timely reminder from you about it. So appreciate it.

If you (others) have any builders that you've considered do continue to share it. Thank you.

Just to add another builder to the list: Latitude 37 is one that I came across as well. But I've not contacted them.

So r u going to build on a stump or concrete slab? Most builder just use concrete slab now. I prefer stump, the reason is if you want to renovate or changing layout or fixing wiring/ plumbing, would be easier and lot cheaper. I wish mind were on a stump.

Based on my understanding, I’ll be opting for a concrete slab.

I’ve got highly reactive soil and lots of gumtrees on the perimeter. A large portion of the issues I’m facing with the current house is due to this fact. Potentially when it was built, they didn’t go deep enough, tree barriers might have been minimal Etc. All speculation but there’s something not right with the place

I'm building with a custom builder (Como Homes) myself in VIC. All of the custom builders (except Latitude 37) quoted me in the region of $15-16k per square, all up. Which is why I think your quotes of $800-900k seem a bit excessive.

Have a read of my brief reviews of the 4 custom builders and the 1 volume builder I had approached: viewtopic.php?p=1828658#p1828658, and maybe one of them will suit you too.

Hi ben888,

Thanks for that. Helps heaps.

How does the $ per square work with wet areas? Does the same $ still apply? Apologies in advance if that's a stupid question. But I rather look stupid now than after signing a contract :p.

I always of the understanding that wet areas are the more expensive 'rooms' in the house.

The $ per square is a way to estimate and compare cost of the overall build, and averages out all the areas in the house.

Obviously the wet areas and the kitchen will cost a lot more $ per square than say the living area or hallway, with the garage costing the least.

Hi

Please keep up dating about the progress, would love to know and hope all well for you.

Most certainly. I've already picked up great things from this thread so far. Hoping that if I keep sharing, others can pick at it and pick up on things for their own journey.

One question, if they dig out your old concrete slab, do they have to refill the land? If they do what kind of soil they put in? Would it compromise the foundation? How thick of the new slab? Foundation is the most important part of the building, did they give u any advise?

Good question. But I don't have the answers yet. I've recently completed a site investigation and I'm trying to make sense of the report. I'll definitely be paying a lot of attention to our foundations should we proceed - especially given the issues we already have with the current property. I do not want a repeat - more so if we are starting from scratch.

Just an update:

1. I've received my soil report. I'm in the process of trying to understand it. I'm also comparing it to my original soil report (2007). Given the issues with house movements on the site, I'm trying to be as careful as I can in this area. It would render the whole exercise pointless and a total waste of money if we ended up with a new house that will be subject to the same issues I currently face. It's now the most time consuming and mind-numbing exercise for me.
   
   
2. We've also decided to engage another architect firm in parallel. There were several reasons for this.

• Upon meeting the owners, we felt that we could work well with them.
  
• We also wanted a second opinion. We decided to take a calculated risk that the design might be the same the other builder we've engaged.
  
• This company had given us a fixed price fee proposal. So we know how much we will be charged for the entire project. It's approximately 53-54k. This includes project management and interior design. There are some additional options which we may or may not take.
  
• It's worth noting that, we don't know what the original builder will cost us. We do know it will be a % of the build. So it could work out to be more expensive??
  
• This new company that we've engaged employs a phased approach. Each stage is independent. If we don't want to go any further after the design stage, that's perfectly fine.

Anyway, that's all I've got for now. I'll update more as soon as there's more to update.

Justme15
The best professional to review your Site and structural Data is an Engineer, the sooner the better!
BTW, The Councils Building department will tell you that, no certified engineering, no building permits
IMO, Hiring another independent Architect in parallel who is not qualified to review the Geotech/engineering, is a waste of $50K OT... Opinions should be based on trusted Data and Proofs, not Architects renderings. hth