Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Apr 08, 2008 12:00 pm Hello everyone.
After a recent visit to Kellyville display village we're very keen to get our own place built. Before we go any further and get all excited I have a few questions that hopefully soem of you can answer. 1) Costs- obviously there is the cost of the land and the house, but what other costs can we expect? 2) Of these other costs above, can anyone give me ball park figures? 3) What's not generally included in the cost of a new home? i.e is flooring included, driveways, fencing etc? Basically I want to get a idea of the total costs to be incured, so any halp will be appericated. Cheers Ian Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 2Apr 08, 2008 12:08 pm Hi Ian, my husband and I are in the process of building a new house and we began the process totally clueless, my first bit of advice would be to ask plenty of questions along the way. Those who were willing to spend the time to explain things to me have generally been the ones who have gotten my business so far!
As well as the house and land there is stamp duty (depends on the price of the land but costing us about $5k) , conveyancing fees (for us about $1K) and fees charged by the lender. Mostly the price advertised for houses doesn't include flooring and driveways etc but you need to get the standard inclusions to find out for sure. Our builder offered a package (lots do this) which included a discounted price for floor coverings and driveways (it was about $5k) Another cost we incurred we hadn't thought about were the various covenants imposed by the estate we bought land in (ie have to have high ceilings and particular roof tiles etc) so check whether this is relevant for you. There is also the cost of fencing and landscaping etc which depending on where you are moving into may or may not need to be completed straight away. I'm sure others can add much more but hope that helps a little Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 4Apr 08, 2008 12:09 pm some of the links here should help:
http://forum.homeone.com.au/viewtopic.php?t=5397&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight= Built Porter Davis "Dromana" 2007. Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 6Apr 08, 2008 12:17 pm Oooh I forgot those, that the costs associated with putting the house on the land, so removal of rock and soil etc so it differs greatly depending on your land. our builder offered a 'fixed' site cost which after they tested the soil has come in at $8K which gave us some peace of mind as I know alot of people have gotten caught out when builders have hit rock on the land and charged thousands and thousands to remove it Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 7Apr 08, 2008 1:37 pm And as another in the middle of building their first home, some other costs you may want to think about:
If you're building in an established suburb, you may face additional costs for traffic management, double handling, restricted access etc (we're on a narrow block on a street with trams) Curtains etc Any "upgrades" such as double glazing, better fixtures and fittings Decking Landscaping Driveways Paths Clothesline Letterbox Fence Security system Moving Interest on the stage payments while you're still paying rent Additional shelving, bookcases etc Lights (usually not provided, just the batterns) Extra powerpoints & lights Computer and home theatre cabling (Sleepless nights while there are torrential downpours on your unprotected particle board floors with no roofing...) That's off the top of my head. As already mentioned, you need to get the standard specifications, compare that to what is in the display homes, and compare that to what you would want in your home. The sky's the limit as far as costs go! Good luck. I guess God didn't use subbies... Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 8Apr 08, 2008 2:08 pm Great, thanks guys and gals. So basically if i said take the cost of buying the land, the cost of the house and add 10% that should be an approx idea of what I'm up for in costs.
This now brings me onto my second set of questions: Payments- how does it all work? I'm currently paying a mortgage and I guess it's gong to take a few months to build the new place, so when do I pay the builders? up front or over time? and the same with the purchase of the land?/ Ian Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 9Apr 08, 2008 3:07 pm I can think of a few things:
if your application takes more than 120 days to be approved by council, your $ will go up, normally between $2K -$5K every increase. During your construction (might last 12+ months??) you might need to live somewhere else if that's your only/primary residential area, so you need to rent somewhere to live and put all your extra furnitures somewhere. That would be extra cost. if you changed something after contract signed, normally builder will charge certain amount on top of the cost for change ($500?) connection fees to Telstra/Gas/Water extra annual fees for Termite Control (we use TermGuard, $300 per year) extra "ridiculous" prices for things you changed from builder's standard inclusion list. (e.g. it might be cheaper for you to knock off the included benchtop and put in granite ones by yourself after handover than get builder to do it) Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 10Apr 08, 2008 3:18 pm We bought the land and house separately. Thus, we paid 10% of the land cost. Currently, we are waiting for the land title.
For the house, we are building PD house. We have paid 5% of the total cost of the house. FYI, this is the link - http://www.porterdavis.com.au/#ourProcess Different situation - my couple friend bought land + house package. When the house is completed, they just have to pay total cost of the package. Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 11Apr 08, 2008 3:29 pm Quote: Different situation - my couple friend bought land + house package. When the house is completed, they just have to pay total cost of the package I think this is very unusual. We are doing a house/land package and paying in installments as per any 'normal' house construction - once land title goes through you pay for land (and stamp duty) and then in standard installments as each stage completed. Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 12Apr 08, 2008 3:34 pm My example was I paid for the land first which settled in only 6 weeks. I then chose a house and began the process while waiting for the title to clear. It's now 6 months later and I am only just about to start building next week.
I paid 5% up front and the rest will be paid in stages over the next 4 months. So it is a long process - I've already paid my council rates on a vaccant block of land. My budget is land + spec house + approx 60k for extras which include site costs of 16k, aircon, upgrades, landscaping, driveway etc etc. I found a good way to make the estimation of building costs is to look at what completed houses are selling for in the same area. If a similar house of less that 5 years old is selling for significantly lower than you estimation then you know there is either something wrong with your budget or it's not a good investment. I'm finding that my house will cost between 10-20k less than the equivelant house under 5 years old in the same estate. You have to compare apples with apples of course - I could have built my house 20k cheaper but it would have looked very average and been no frills. Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 13Apr 09, 2008 9:41 am Unfortunately, I'm not sure that you can reasonably estimate a % on top of the base price of a houes. It depends so much on the builder, their inclusions, estate requirements etc.
For example, some estates offer free fencing and lanscaping, others don't. =$$ Some builders include flooring, others don't. = $$ Some builders have special "packages" of upgrades, others don't. = $$ Some builders sell their houses "as displayed", others don't. = $$ Some blocks of land will require more expensive site costs than others. = $$ Some estates have strict requirements on designs which may mean changes to your standard plans = $$ In terms of what you could spend above the simple "land + house" price...well I've heard that ranging anywhere from $10k up to $80k. So it really comes down to who you build with, what you choose to include and where you build. I'm not sure you could really estimate broadly without know where you're building and who you're building with. Having said that, you can find out a LOT of that stuff well before committing to any one block of land or builder. For us, we walked into some of these nice displays from M and PD and nearly fell over when we saw the price difference between the quoted price and the "as displayed" price Similarly, our site costs were only $5k whereas at some locations you can be up for as much as $20k Alan and Thuy in Melbourne Building a second time! Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 14Apr 09, 2008 10:02 am Nothing is free in this world, the difference is whether those things you mentioned are "included" or not. It won't be free!
But if you ask the question you will get some sort of indicative figure for those things ==> and you can decide if it worth the effort to get 2nd quote, as it might be cheaper if you do it yourself (e.g. water tank, air con, flooring, granite benchtop, ...etc) If you want to go to details, there's lots of other stuffs such as scaffolding, our builder specify that as extra in the tender, Domain (now part of Clarendon) has that included.... Just collect all the information and ask a lot of questions, everything impacts the $, the more you ask you will have clearer idea of the whole picture. Re: I'm a beginner and I need HELP. 15Apr 09, 2008 10:08 am One more thing, some of the prices listed in the tender are "provisional", which means there's chance it will go up (99% in our case....)
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