Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Dec 08, 2009 9:38 am My Husband and I have seen a new estate north of Perth that we love. The land is as yet untitled, due to be titled in March 2010. We have never built a house before. We have a RE agent coming today to give us a valuation for our property so we have a rough figure what to expect to get for this place. But what I am finding difficult is to figure out how much everything is going to cost in regards to building. We will be on a very strict budget as I am a stay at home mum and we want to keep it that way for as long as possible. So where do we start to sort out a budget? It is hard to even look at housing plans and prices when we are trying to figure out what 'extras' we will encounter along the way. Any information or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Building in Perth. Celebration homes Oasis. Pre-start complete 25th March 2010 Titles due April 2010 Re: Building and sticking to a budget - WA 2Dec 08, 2009 10:26 am We went to display homes to see what we liked and wanted and then found out what was standard and how much were the upgrades.This meant quite a few emails to our sales rep.Working out what you want and need and what you can do later. It may work best for us to do our floorboards/carpets after handover. Our mortgage at the moment is under $50,000 so we dont want a huge $200,000..this is our decider. Re: Building and sticking to a budget - WA 3Dec 08, 2009 11:24 am If you have a budget, choose a house well below it. Eg. If you can only afford $200,000 for the house alone (excluding land), I'd look at a house around $150,000, less if you want upgrades (see what you can control). There are variables, some you can control, some you can't. What you can't control: - Site costs. The house price is excluding this. Sometimes, the site costs will only be $5000, as the site is only sand, there's not rocks picked up in the Engineering survey, it's all perfectly retained and all they need to do is level it, compact it and stick a slab on. Our builder said the highest they had seen was $90,000 as it was limestone, and they would have to cut into the rock to level it (as it out in the hills) to build the house they wanted. Ours was a bit over $10,000 and we had to put retaining on both sides, and the block is just sandy soil with no rocks. The only way to do it is the Engineering survey, which is done after you give them the initial deposit (~$2000) to get it done. Usually, estates are safer as every block is level and already retained, so the cost shouldn't be too bad. But it's hard to predict things like rocks, etc. Maybe ask neighbours what their site costs are to get more accurate? But it is safest to go in areas that are traditionally sandy soils, not limestone. - Things going wrong. We've had to pay to fix our fencing ($2,500) and so on. Leave a contingency in your budget. We haven't had any other variations - site costs didn't go over, etc. But the really old fencing around our block carked it and we're out of pocket for that. There's always something! Depending where you're looking, if it was in my area, I'd leave about $30,000 spare for this. What you can control: - Any change/upgrade from the standard. If you want fancier doors, a better garage door, nicer handles, larger tiles, etc. It all costs money. If there are things you can't live without, like you know you will want this type of door, etc then you will have to adjust this in your budget. I never expected it, but ours went up nearly $20,000. With upgrading the doors, cornices, kitchen splashback, putting in overhead cupboards, etc. The only thing that didn't cost us more was changing window sizes. (Oh and we got money back downgrading our garage door from a wood look to a normal one). Remember - if you are really on a budget, you can always add cupboards later, change tiles later, change doors later, etc. If you stick to exactly what is in spec, the house price won't go up. But if you start thinking "I could put a door on the laundry" then you need to either lower the house price or increase the budget. If you are on a strict budget, allow zero for this and don't get tempted by looking at anything out of spec. Money for afterwards: - You will need about $20-30,000 to finish off the house. It's far cheaper to arrange painting, flooring, curtains, air conditioning, fans, non-standard lighting, pretty much anything that isn't a structural change after handover. So you will need to keep money aside for this. But you can always do it cheaper too though to keep this part of the budget down. Paint yourself, if you want carpet, go to a carpet offcut wearhouse and just use a different offcut for each room. You can do click laminate flooring yourself - bunning have heaps of info there and I've helped out my fiance's siblings do this with their own houses. Try to get cashies for any electrical work (depending where you live my fiance could do that too if you get stuck... He's an electrician). Look for lights on special and you can even get the DIY lights from places like Beacon Lighting too. Just wait for specials! You can make your own curtains - spotlight sell them in all ready and you just need to sew the bottom up. For gardens - my Mum grew her entire garden from seeds and cuttings of other plants. You can even grow lawn from seeds (not advised if you had dogs). Or my fiance's sister got free lawn in the Quokka from someone pulling it up in an area to put a pool in - just had to hire a cutter to get it into rolls and get people to bring over trailers to help. We even did the leveling and prep for the lawn (Fu's advice on here is FANTASTIC!). You can also buy off cuts of lawn rolls from cheap from lawn places and place it down like a puzzle - looks bad at first but when established an excellent result. Or concrete/paving/limestone means no water bills! There's so many options you can do to keep the price of finishing it off down. We're aiming to keep the finish off to under $20,000, so maybe budget this too. And once again - don't buy anything new too as this cuts into the budget! Re: Building and sticking to a budget - WA 4Dec 08, 2009 11:27 am I'm using a spreadsheet. I've gone through the info on the designs we're interested in and listed what's standard, what's an extra; then I have two totals for each house - one for a pretty basic build of the design, and one with the "maybes" included so I can see what I *really* want will cost (which stops me from really wanting it ) Have gotten a good idea of pricing by going to display homes and picking up every bit of paper offered to me (not signing anything though!), and doing a *lot* of research on the 'net. I like to think at this stage I'm pretty much comparing apples with apples; but some may be granny smiths and some golden delicious - Land registered 27/11/09, settlement 22/01/10 - Currently doing the rounds of display homes. Re: Building and sticking to a budget - WA 5Dec 08, 2009 12:21 pm Thank you so much for your fast replies. Just thought I would add the estate we are looking at is brand spanking new. Not one house in it as yet. The first land release was on the weekend with another due this week sometime. So in regards to site costs etc, we have no-one to ask. But just from what I can see the blocks do seem to be mainly sandy. But no way of know what is underneath I guess?? Building in Perth. Celebration homes Oasis. Pre-start complete 25th March 2010 Titles due April 2010 Re: Building and sticking to a budget - WA 7Dec 08, 2009 4:36 pm Yes the block are retained and seem to be already levelled. There is bushland around so we might pop out there and have a peek. Thanks so much for your advice it has really been a huge help. Building in Perth. Celebration homes Oasis. Pre-start complete 25th March 2010 Titles due April 2010 Coming back to your old stomping grounds, huh? Renovations on a budget can be quite the journey. It's like giving your house a new lease on life. 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