Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Dec 31, 2009 8:57 am Hi all, First time poster, so please be kind My situation is as follows: * Australian currently living in London. * Planning to return in another 2-3 years time * I want to buy a piece of land in the Sydney north shore and build a duplex so I can potentially have the folks stay near us. * Have never done anything like this before! Couple of questions: * Is this a crazy idea? To manage a development project from overseas? Has anyone done this before? * I was thinking of hiring a project manager to manage the full development process for me - are there firms offering such service in Sydney? I want to be fairly hands off as I will not be able to fly back to Sydney every few months. * What is the construction cost likely to be? I am thinking of going with a project home, however I am sure that the prices they quote are not the final all in costs. Say they quote $400k, what buffer do I need to build in to have the place all in order (i.e landscaping, flooring, driveway, the lot!)? 10%? 20%? more?!? * How easy is it to get DA for a duplex? * Is there anything else I need to consider? I would greatly appreciate any other words of advice! Happy new year to you all! Re: Building a new home from overseas, advice please! 2Dec 31, 2009 9:10 am It's tough but not impossible I don't think I could do the whole process from overseas. I would factor in at least 2 trips for selections and handover. I have found (having done it once before and now a second time), that you end up thinking about it a lot and staring at photo's that people have sent you. I can't wait for the day I'm back home to get more involved. The main concern is around assurance that the build meets standards and your expectations. Without being there to check every day, you do have the option of independant inspections during the build to cover this for you. Good luck with it. Re: Building a new home from overseas, advice please! 3Dec 31, 2009 6:02 pm Big M do a lot of builds for overseas investors. If you give them a call and explain the situation they will put you through to someone who specializes in this. We visited to do the selections, and we'll be around during building, but apart from that we didn't really need to be there.. would have been nice to have more time to look at display homes though, and to check out other homes built by the same company. Metricon Riva 33 - http://herlihy-riva.blogspot.com Site start 15/03/2010 - Handover 23/12/2010 9 months and 8 days (284 calendar days) from site start to handover Re: Building a new home from overseas, advice please! 4Jan 01, 2010 7:35 am I haven't built from overseas, but I did buy my current place from overseas. I'd assume that if you can hire an independent building inspector that would be able to look for issues throughout the build process, then you'd be alright. After all, there's not much more you can do when you're here anyways. The hardest part of this might be the financial process and communicating with the bank to get the progress payments released on time. I see no reason why you couldn't do this. The build process is a bit stressful regardless of where you're at. Stefan Building the M3tr!con Liberty 42 at Stonecutters Ridge. The New Build Blog - "Life, In Progress." Stonecutters Ridge Community Website | My photos Re: Building a new home from overseas, advice please! 5Jan 01, 2010 9:31 am If you've got any friends or family here you trust that'd be a big help as well. Can use them to keep an eye on things and so on Land Deposit - 18/12/2009 Became a land Baron - 21/12/2010 Site Start - 27/1/2011 All moved in!! Re: Building a new home from overseas, advice please! 6Jan 05, 2010 4:33 am Thanks for the advice so far. So can anyone recommend a project management company? I do have family in oz who will be able to keep an eye on the project, but I would like an external company to manage any day to day issues. I had couple of quotations from pre-covid times, I am quite sure they are more expensive now plus with current USD rate and shipping costs it makes them really unaffordable. 6 24326 Thanks. There are plenty of builders around my suburb. I'll make sure to do some door-to-door knocking, or note their building details on the temp fence. 4 4753 Can anyone recommend a good/affordable retaining wall and fence builder that I can get a quote from located in Sydney? 8 45838 |