Recommendations for homes designed around rearward views?

TeamTite · Jun 03, 2013 5:07 pm

Hi all, can anyone here recommend builders with new home designs on display in the Perth area that are built to take advantage of rear views? Most of the display villages we've looked at have homes that don't quite cover what we need. The closest I've found to what I'm after is the Rural Building Co's "Harvest view", "Ärgyle" and "Settlers view" which have a quite spectaclar glass front to the living areas and are obviously designed around a pretty outlook from those rooms. Basically I'm looking for anything that is designed to maximise views. I've tried googling but can't quite find much else other than the RBC views range.

By way of introduction, we're new to the forum and are here after spending 2 years searching for the perfect home in the Perth hills for us that we just couldn't find. We gave up and started looking at blocks and last wednesday finally bought a 2200 sqm sloping block in the southern Perth hills that we are going to build exactly what we want on. Our block is roughly a 1 in 4 slope (average 15degrees across the whole block). We're getting surveys and soil reports done in the next few weeks.

We want to build something that takes advantage of the rear views into the valley. We spent Saturday looking at displays for pole home builders such as Cedar homes, Ross Squire, Total Frame Homes & Rural Building company. The guy at Ross Squires suggested that maybe we could build on a concrete slab and didn't necessarily need to go with a pole home. That pleased me because it opens up the range of builders we can use.

My husband has been involved in a new home build once before but it's all new territory to me and all very daunting. The "what you see is what you get" process of buying a pre-existing home has always been my preference, so buying this block and starting this project is very much outside my comfort zone. I'm really nervous about what lays ahead and whether we have bitten off more than we can chew. The first hurdle is going to be finding out what we are up for in terms of site costs, something I'm dreading as I've heard a few horror stories about sites like ours.

Anyway, I guess my first question would be to ask if anyone has built in or around Roleystone and would have any recommendations or suggestions for us?

Second question is if anyone who has already been down this road that we are starting on can point us in the right direction with some suggestions of which builders/display homes to look at for designs that are built to take advantage of rearward views?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions

Forg · Jun 03, 2013 5:13 pm

I can't help with the specific request; but I'm wondering if you're going down the project rather than custom path due to cost expectation? From the prices we've been getting from project builders for fairly minor variations from standard, I'd be kind-of surprised if you wouldn't get a better end-result for the same price (or less) in your situation by getting something drawn-up & pimping it around 3-4 local custom builders ... ?

1rocky · Jun 03, 2013 6:53 pm

also thinking have you tried building a custom home you can check out our thread to give you idea as we had our house design to take advantage of our views sorry we could recommend a great builder but unfortunately we are in NSW

HomeAngels · Jun 03, 2013 6:57 pm

We have a downslope block and we decided to go with a custom builder. Our slope sounds similar to yours (ours is a 20 degree slope).

I'm not aware of any Perth builders but good luck with your search.

munta · Jun 05, 2013 5:13 pm

Hi TeamTite

Depending on your budget, I would consider a custom builder rather than a project builder. I have no doubt that a project builder will come in cheaper, however not having the experience that a custom builder (or a project builder that has a strong history in the area), you are likely to be hit up with costly variations after you have committed.

RBC are a project builder with the experience and knowledge to build in the Perth Hill's, a good example of a custom builder would be Westmade Homes who have a number of stunning homes built in gooseberry hill.

I would also consider using a building designer so you can "shop" your drawing's a selected list of builder's

good luck with your build regardless

MBR · Jul 05, 2013 1:39 pm

Hi TeamTite,

We were the same - trying to find a good design that takes advantage of rear views for our 5 acre overlooking valley Perth Hills plot of land. There really aren't many that do them in Perth ... there seems to be a few down Yallingyup/Margaret River way as that kind of build is more popular but I have a feeling most of those have been custom designed.

We have ended up going with RBC's Argyle.

Good luck.

bluesteel · Jul 05, 2013 2:47 pm

Ditto to most of the above.

Get a design you like - either alter a home design you have seen or work with something as a base.
Look at homes sold in areas with rear views as they may great floor plan ideas.

Then I would go to builders either custom or volume builders.

I would say most project homes are not designed with any view in mind.

Tracyw · Jul 07, 2013 9:26 pm

Also living on the Perth Hills, We wanted the same rear outlook, and found that some project builders have farmhouse ranges which cater for this. We also looked at rural building company, but ended up going for Dale Alcock. So far so good. Be prepared for the site works. $100k+. You will save if you can do it yourself, but a lot of builders won't allow that. In regards to display homes, RBC were the only ones we found too. Dale Alcock didn't have any on display but organised for us to look at a newly built one which was a great help.

Perth_Euro · Aug 22, 2013 11:03 am

Any updates teamtite?
We are heading down the same path in bedfordale.

housebythewater · Aug 22, 2013 10:19 pm

Hi Teamtite, I was also looking for rearview house plans in W.A. late last year, though I was limited to a 20m wide block and still wanted plenty of garden, so were looking mostly at double story. There were very few options. A few that we looked at included RBC (Bletchley Loft with modification to suit our block size), Webb & Brown-Neaves (various plans), Great Living and some of the Peter Stannard homes. Briefly looked at GJ Gardner (Bunbury) and Eco Designer Homes. There are a few others around but I can't remember their names (Isla Vista? Sunsets?). My research was mostly online since we were living O/S.

In the end we have signed a PPA for WBN's Rubix.

tonylamp · Aug 26, 2013 5:23 pm

We are looking at great living to build our second home, built with them a couple of years ago.
we like the Bertram as we have a narrow lot (12m) and need to go 2 storey.
did you find any impressive homes in your research, would'nt mind some advice?

TeamTite · Jul 22, 2014 3:07 pm

TeamTite UPDATE!

Just a quick update 12 months down the track for anyone interested who may be in the same boat as us when it comes to hills building, solar passive design (on a sub-optimal solar passive block) and rearward views.

Basically we looked at practically every project builder display home in Perth and couldn't really find anything that would do the trick for us without a ridiculous amount of modification. So, my clever husband sat down with pencil and paper and has nutted out a design to cover pretty much all of our eccentric needs as well as take advantage of the rear views down to the rockface and billabong/river.

I have to admit we are not overly happy with it - but that's mainly because of the elevation - it's kinda boring and not the look we would like. That has happened because we were very limited in how we could design the elevation because of the solar passive principles we wanted to incorporate (clerestory windows etc) and the challenge of building on a severe sloping block that slopes away from the north.

It's not the best block to build on when you want a solar passive home, but we couldn't resist the billabong at the bottom so bought the block anyway, knowing we would be very challenged and limited when it came to designing a home to build on it.

I am writing this on my phone right now, but I will switch to the laptop and try and upload some photos of the block and the design in an hour or so.

We are meeting with a few builders over the next few weeks who have expressed a willingness to build our design on our challenging block in Roleystone and will hopefully get some constructive feedback from them that will help us narrow down the choices on who to go with.

I must say, it hasn't been easy - most builders are not interested in Roleystone right from the outset, even though we have sorted our siteworks and will be building on a concrete slab /sand pad, so we haven't exactly had many to choose from.

If anyone has any recommendations of good local builders in the hills, please let us know.

Designs to follow in another post, shortly.

Jays · Jul 22, 2014 6:17 pm

I'm on the journey with cedar homes down the road in bedfordale. Give peter Oakley a call there and have a chat about your needs/ideas. Worst case they can't help or it's not what you want.

We hsvent started on site yet but they have recently completed a house on bedfordale hill road that is on a steep slope.