Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 27, 2009 7:53 am HI everyone, This is a wonderful forum, ive spent all morning reading through the threads (poor kids having to do a series of high kicks to get my attention and breakfast! ) We are right at the very beginning of our plans, still trying to decide whether its going to be better to knock down and build or add another floor on our existing home. Thought Id give you a quick run down and see if anyone has time for any advice? Currently living in North Ryde, Sydney in a small 3 bedroom weatherboard love shack! We always talked about putting another level on the house and with 2 small kids we desperatley need more room. My husband has pulled a figure of $200k out of the air as what he thinks it will cost for us to go up incl all the fixtures, rendering of the house etc. Yesterday we made a huge mistake by going out to homeworld and looking at some of the show homes...now I want one of those lol! We absolutely fell in love with the Santorini, Masterton home which has a starting price of 216,200 so there we go, budget blown already The rep at Masterton advised that depending on our site, we would be looking at an extra $70 - 80K for site costs, floor covering, basix, council, driveway and A/C which bring us up to $300 already without any changes or nice facades. Anyway, just wondering what the general opinion is on getting a builder to go up (How doyou even go about finding a reputable one?) or stretching ourselves and going with a masterton type house? Thanks and sorry if I sound completely ignorant, I am! Carla Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 2Apr 27, 2009 8:18 am My sister and her hubby (with kids) did a reno + 2nd floor many years ago. They basically had 1 living space and 1 bathroom to use while everything was being done. It was pretty rough going but I dare say a lot quicker than a knockdown and rebuild. But this all depends on the current condition of your house. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 3Apr 27, 2009 8:46 am Thanks for replying We currently only have 1 bathroom and living area so that wouldn't really make much of a difference. Time wise isn't really a concern either although obviously would rather it didn't take a massive amount of time. Im trying to work out whether the added expense of knocking down and rebuilding will be worth it to get our dream home in the end. We would have to probably m ove in with my IL's (shudder!) while it was being built as opposed to living here and going up and putting up with the mess and noise. Im getting a migraine thinking about it! Imagine what I'll be like when once we get things underway!! Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 4Apr 27, 2009 8:59 am I know a couple of people that have looked at extending and renovating and once they got figures back have decided to knock down and rebuild. Depending on many factors, the extension could work out more expensive. If the extension will be quite large, this could be the case. The other thing is, with an extension, you are still left with the original part of the house and any problems that may have. With a knock down and build you have a nice warranty for the next few years. My mortgage broker is actually tossing up about the same thing and his builder mate (who would have got the job of the extension ) said it would work out more cost effective to knock down and rebuild. I leave you to fend for yourself, figure things out yourself. Terrence Malick Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 5Apr 27, 2009 10:09 am Certainly didn't look at adding an extra floor, but did look at extending to add 2 more rooms, a bathroom & an underoof carport so that we could use the garage for more living area. .......so we sold up & bought a block of land to build on The cost would have meant that the reno could have been written up as a "Dummies Guide to Overcapitalising"! I think a knock down-rebuild is a good idea if you love the area you're in, but you would have the additional cost of accomodation while you're rebuilding. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 7Apr 27, 2009 1:26 pm Of course, you also have 3rd option - the simplest one of all - sell your existing house and buy again, upgrading to a larger established house. Depending on how well real estate is selling in your area and whether there are suitable houses in the area for you to upgrade to. (presuming you want to stay in same area ) Has the advantage of not haveing to double up on payments - ie if you knocked down and rebuilt you would have to pay rent and construction morgtage until new house was completed. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 8Apr 27, 2009 3:07 pm For us the cheapest option was to knock down and rebuild. We always had a 7 year plan for our old house when we bought it, as we knew it would be too small to bring a family up in, and there was no garage, one bathroom and one living area. We could have added a second storey, but that still wouldn't solve the problem of no garage. We could have built out a little in the front, but that would have completely destroyed the street appeal of our home, and would have completely lost all sense of 'flow'. There would have been an old bit here, and a new bit there....and we just didn't want that! We also could have gone down the path of selling and buying, but including stamp duty, agents fees and the huge prices of semi new 40 square houses in our general area was just absolutely ridiculous at close to $1m. We had our home valued and knew that was not an option either. We could then be stuck with a good sized house, that wasn't to our taste and required another $100,000 on renovations... We thought long and hard about our decision weighing up all the pros and cons, and decided that since we pretty much owned the house and land, it would be cheaper to not have to worry about stamp duty, put the floorplan (including garage!) on our block (and keep the same neighbours!), and fit it out in all the colours WE wanted. We are also extremely lucky to not have to spend almost $20K on rent throughout the whole process (about 14 months)....although we do have to pay for storage of most of our furniture (~ $260 per month) There are many things to think about, but for us, this was the best! Do your sums, get a few estimates, look at costs of selling and buying the house you want, rent and a couple of quotes from project home builders to see what you are up against! Good luck!!! Henley - Wilshire Mk 3 ... I love my house!! Site start: 4th Feb 09 Handover: 10th Sep 09 Blog: http://stormygirlscastle.blogspot.com/ Build Thread: viewtopic.php?t=7166 Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 9Apr 27, 2009 3:12 pm I'm one of those people Jo is talking about, who went through the whole process of having plans drawn up, finalised, put through council, and quoted on for an extension (up) and renovation. The quotes blew our minds (in a bad way), and when we started looking in to demo & rebuild, it actually came in cheaper - even buildong a big house, fully optioned up!!! To this day, it still doesn't make sense to me, but that's how it was! Solidarity, not solidity.......The Lexicon of Life Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 10Apr 27, 2009 3:19 pm I'm another who went through the DA process for renovations, got the building licence and then baulked at the cost - it really was lineball for us in terms of going ahead with a big reno vs knocking over and building new. Buying established didnt work for us either as to buy in the area is $1m plus - and then you still need to do renos... I am SO happy with our decision to knock over and start again, everything is new, the house is positioned how we want on the block, we get great light, the house flows etc etc ... Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 11Apr 27, 2009 5:14 pm Becster I'm another who went through the DA process for renovations, got the building licence and then baulked at the cost - it really was lineball for us in terms of going ahead with a big reno vs knocking over and building new. Buying established didnt work for us either as to buy in the area is $1m plus - and then you still need to do renos... I am SO happy with our decision to knock over and start again, everything is new, the house is positioned how we want on the block, we get great light, the house flows etc etc ... Another one here too, got the plans drawn up, got a few quotes and didn't want to spend $200,000+ putting the second storey on. We would have majorly over capitalised so we sold and are building a new home. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 12Apr 27, 2009 5:19 pm We too looked at reno - to do it well ie new plumbing, electrics to old house - $300000 so our plan knock down rebuild. Even better option if it is your primary residence (ours is currently rental so CGT) sell and find an established house with what you want. Good luck. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 13Apr 27, 2009 5:33 pm Hi Curlysue, Like you I'm quite new here and so far I've found the natives are very friendly!! I'm also not too far away from you on the Putney side of Ryde. We bought our house undecided about whether to renovate and extend, or knockdown and rebuild, but as others have said.. the cost of renovating and extending was becoming far too expensive when we did the sums. We also considered building an architect-designed house but at 600-700K just for the house (no landscaping, interiors etc) that quickly became out of the question. After looking at house designs for 2-plus years, we've decided to build with Allcastle (see my blog for details). One word of caution, we found ALL the volume builders we spoke to grossly underestimated how much extra it costs to build on top of their base price. They all quoted around the 80K mark and so far (and we haven't gone wild with variations etc) we are at approx $150K over and above the base price. This figure includes everything such as timber floors, carpet, driveway, exterior deck, window coverings...the list goes on! I hope this helps. Pix Built a (highly) modified Allcastle Maxworth 38.7 in Sydney. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 14Apr 27, 2009 11:23 pm If you do decide to KDR, be prepared to do the "KD" part without any involvement from the people doing the "R" part. Despite their friendly ads that say "Like where you live? Talk to us about rebuilding at your current address", Clarendon for one, and probably nearly all the bigger companies don't do knock down. It's a separate DA through the council. Didn't stop us though. Built the C£arend0n Cambridge: Moved in. Happy campers. Here's our story on HomeOne I might be old, but I have no trouble finishing my... er... Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 15Apr 27, 2009 11:37 pm We dithered literally for years about extending, moving, building, extending, moving, building, extending, moving, building, extending, moving, building.....eep! Now I'm getting dizzy. At one point we decided to extend and got a few quotes - some really cheap and some ridiculously, heart-stoppingly expensive. Then my husband went off the idea and we renovated instead. THEN when I was quietly going mental five or six years later, I finally threatened to divorce him if we didn't get a bigger house somehow. We decided that extending would still leave us with some of the same design flaws we were always complaining about, and at best would be a compromise. The only way to get exactly what we wanted was to build from scratch. Knock down and rebuild just wasn't an option - a new house in our street would have stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb. Anyway, to answer your question about how to find a decent builder - ask lots of people! Look around your area and see who's recently extended. Go knock on their doors and ask if they'd mind telling you who the uilder was, and how the experience was. Ask people at work, relatives, friends, friends of friends - you must know some people who've extended recently. In the end, only you can decide which option is best for you. They all have their drawbacks. Living through a reno is hell, but so is building, especially if you have to sell and rent while the new place goes up. Moving sucks. Moving twice really bites! Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 16Apr 28, 2009 8:02 am Wow thanks guys! There is so much to think about it literally has my head spinning. We have organised a builder to come and give us a quote on Saturday and have a bank guy coming to see us next Monday. I had made a mud map of what we would like and might redo it a little bit after seeing the masterton homes on the weekend. I am having a small stroke at the thought of getting into debt to the tune of more than $400k (combination of current mortgage and what we need to borrow) but with interest rates so low at the moment, its kind of pushing us along. Thanks very much for all your advice, I'll keep you posted Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 17Apr 29, 2009 8:35 pm Hi Carla, There's some interesting comments (some of them by me ) about the role of architects, and KDR versus extend/reno in the following thread : viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5391 Cheers, Justin. Re: Newbie here! Knock down and build or go up? 18May 01, 2009 11:39 am We are going a long way about it but we are buying another house to demolish and build on and selling our current house. It would actually cost us more to renovate this house than the other option and then we didn't want to over capitalise either - we would have more than reached the price ceiling for a renovated 60s house. We love where we are now but the figures didn't stack up. After buying land, demolition and building a house we will owe maybe 20-30k more on a mortgage than we owe now but will have a brand new house and that house will be worth a lot more also. Hi I live in a 100yr old semi and my neighbour added an additional floor last yr and our architect has advised that we can knock down our semi and build a free-standing… 0 37880 We've had the offer of a short term tenant whilst waiting for CDC/DA home approval and demolition for our knock down rebuild. It would achieve a pretty low rent as it's… 0 13913 a building inspector should be able to tell you about any major problems but we need a floor plan with dimensions to clarify options for extra bedrooms ... sometime an… 1 8882 |