Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jul 14, 2007 11:16 am Hi Everyone,
I have been learning so much reading all of your posts, I thought it was time to start a bit of give and take rather than just take My husband and I are building a custom designed home in Adelaide and are owner builder. We are building a single storey, double brick, colourbond roof home ( I will try and work out how to get a plan on here). We have been reading with interest the site costs people have incurred and were expecting/budgeting up to $30,000 for ours. Let me tell you, we were quite suprised (or perhaps you could say mortified) when we were told they would be anywhere from $55,000 to $76,000. We ended up negotiating with a family friend to have the job done for $54,000 . We have been back and forth with the engineer and concreter and multiple people have told us there are no short cuts we can take to reduce our 1.6metre footings (also reactive clay soil and trees on neighbouring blocks). Has anyone heard of site costs this high? Thanks for your comments Helen Re: Owner Builder : First time post with crazy site costs 2Jul 14, 2007 11:57 am Ours are about $10000 higher - reactive soil, lots of trees, three metres slope down from front to back. If we want the house design we want on that block we have to pay the price. We're demolishing and building in a well established suburb. We could do it a lot cheaper elsewhere, a lot cheaper with a different builder, a lot cheaper with a different house plan... I guess it is personal choice... Re: Owner Builder : First time post with crazy site costs 4Jul 14, 2007 12:06 pm thanks for sharing your comments Brittany. I agree there was no compromise. we are also building a house we designed ourselves in the suburb we have always wanted to live so we really have no flexibility. Our choice to go double brick has upped the site costs somewhat, but again we didn't want to compromise on this. I hadn't read about any site costs as high as ours so it was nice to read that at least one other person has encountered a similar situation. Where are you building? We are in Adelaide. Re: Owner Builder : First time post with crazy site costs 5Jul 14, 2007 12:59 pm In Melbourne..
We went down the process of a custom designed home but it turned out too pricey even without our wish list. We went through all the project homes and picked the designs closest to what we wanted. We picked two designs from two project builders, paid some money, told them the alterations that we wanted and got some initial quotations off them. One builder was happy to accomodate our alterations and that is who we chose. Luckily they were slightly cheaper. Site costs were similar from both although they worded every component differently so hard to compare apples with apples. Re: Owner Builder : First time post with crazy site costs 6Jul 14, 2007 5:16 pm I agree, some quotes make it so hard to compare with one another (a conspiracy perhaps!). I think it is reassuring when you get two quotations that are around the same mark but when they word them differently, it creates even more work for you!
My husband's father is in demolition and salvage which is the main reason we have been able to go ahead with being owner builder rather than project build. He has all the internal second hand bricks, has lovely second hand oak floor boards and has all the second hand timber for our roof. I think if it wasn't for him, there is no way we would be able to build the way we are. There are so many lovely project homes out there though, i don't think we would have been able to choose one without making a thousand additions or modifications. Helen Hi folks, Victoria resident here. I've submitted my owner builder application to the VBA. I thought I'd share my experience so far. I submitted my application… 0 5977 I had 28m2 of engineered pavers laid six months back and it was difficult to find someone not taking the pi$$. Internet suggested it should be $85-100/m2 to lay them.… 3 9521 |