Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Feb 11, 2022 3:42 pm Hi all, I've just signed up and this is my first post. I hope I haven't missed anything obvious before posting but looking for some general advice on building on a corner in Brisbane. I'm looking at a corner lot which is long and narrow and I would need to build the garage on the end with the entry on the side for it to work as per image below. The trouble is, looking at the major builders, I can't see any design similar to this.... Just a rough sketch of the first floor only Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ I guess this is a 2 fold question but 1. Am I forced to go a custom builder or does anyone know of a major builder who has a design similar to this? 2. Am I going to pay a lot more going custom? I've spoken to a few builders and done some research but it seems it "depends". I see some custom builders market themselves as competitive to larger builders and they have given me some rough quotes that seem ok but of course they can't go into specifics without seeing a floor plan and going through the design process. I realise there is no hard and fast answer but keen to hear thoughts of those who built a similar house on a corner lot. Thanks, Re: Building on a corner lot in Brisbane 2Feb 11, 2022 4:49 pm the answer to your question in fact is - "it depends". I can share our experience with you, as we were/are in a similar situation. We wanted to build a new house to fix all the mistakes we've made when building the current one. We've looked at the plans various builders offered, but didn't find anything we could fit our needs with just minor modifications. I ended up drawing a custom plan, and then we've picked a builder whose display house we liked the most (a medium sized builder). We've shown them the plan, they said "yeah that's great, it looks roughly similar to one of our designs, so we'll use that as a base for pricing". They gave us a base price for the house with standard inclusions for our custom floor plan, which as far as I can tell is on par in $/sqm with the reference design they've used, and then we've added all the really custom extras that don't affect the floor area/plan as additional inclusions. We're still to start construction, so I can't tell you what the final outcome is, but so far the biggest pain point for us was that everything in inclusions was referenced as 'in lieu of standard', but for some items it was hard to figure out what the 'standard' is given it's a custom plan and we've upgraded almost every single thing from their standard inclusions. This is because their processes aren't really optimised for people building custom houses. With custom builder you'd get a more personalised approach, but the price will also reflect that. We did check with custom builder when we realised that we're way over our original budget and are approaching the custom builder pricing with all the inclusions, but it ended up still being dearer. Hope that helps. Also as a side note, I'd check if your plan will meet council requirements. I'm not sure whether having the garage and bedroom walls aligned like that is allowed, even if it is a corner lot. But I could be wrong. Re: Building on a corner lot in Brisbane 3Feb 11, 2022 4:55 pm Haha yes. It does depend My boss you to hate me using that word but I totally get it from both sides. "I ended up drawing a custom plan, and then we've picked a builder whose display house we liked the most (a medium sized builder)." Does that mean you found a medium sized builder who does custom plans also? Hope your build goes well and thanks for your reply. Re: Building on a corner lot in Brisbane 4Feb 11, 2022 5:25 pm well we didn't specifically look for one, it's more that the builder that was on top of our list of display houses we liked was happy to do it when we have asked them about it. at the end of the day, if you're building on a small lot, all the houses are more or less the same, and there's not a lot of ways to slice that pie. you probably won't get much luck with volume builders, but medium size ones are more accommodating. also while we're building a 'custom' house, we're not going via 'custom' process where you'd get architect to design it first, drafts people to draw up plan, someone else to come up with bill of materials and then you shopping around for builders to quote on it. we still went through their 'standard' process. Hello All, I have a small lot in one of the suburbs in Brisbane. It is 402 sqm. According to small lot code, I can construct only 50% of the area. Is there a way my… 0 7344 Construction started in the first week of August, and already done the frame. It has started to move finally 8 14746 I would also extend the pantry into that space, so the powder room is an L shape. Can you show a bit more of what the pantry area looks like? I had similar on my design… 2 12588 |