Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Jan 20, 2014 11:31 pm Hi there, Relatively new here so excuse me if it seems like a dumb question! My partner and I are looking to build our first house when we get back from our next holiday (August), or at least formally starting the process of getting it underway. We both have specific ideas of what we want our house to look like, even a plan from a design your own plan website. So what's my next step? Are there building companies you can take plans to and they can give you a rough estimate on cost (so we can find out if we could realistically afford our dream home or if it plain isn't going to happen and we should rethink it) or at least a ball-park figure rounding to the closest 100,000? If not, are there any particularly good building companies that will take on BYO house plans? I have a friend in real estate that keeps telling me to just find a plan with a housing company and use that, but they simply aren't what we are looking for! Any help would be appreciated! Thanks! Re: I have a house plan, where do I go from here? 2Jan 21, 2014 8:08 am My belief is that you will find a plan from a project-home builder that's close enough to what you've designed, that you will save a significant amount of money getting that plan redesigned to match what you want - IF your primary concern is floor-plan & layout, or if the fittings & finishes you want to fit are the same as you see in project homes. Rearranging floor-plans really isn't that expensive with project-home builders; they fall down once you start wanting things like enough storage in your bathrooms, solar under-floor heating, thermally-broken window frames (ie. so that double-glazing actually has an effect), and so on. Now we did go to a builder that did exactly what you describe, they took our rough plan & came-up with an estimate of what it'd cost to build with them. I think it was about $4k we paid for that, but you don't get too many back-and-forth reiterations when you do that - the end-result won't be particularly precise (and in our case it wasn't really finished - additionally it was about half a million dollars than we expected!). If I were doing it again, and the stuff I wanted to fit wasn't only standard project-home stuff, I'd take the hit to get an architecting company to draw something up; a decent one should be able to work to a rough budget, I haven't tried a quantity-surveyor myself but in theory they should be able to break the design down into an estimate. I'd then pimp the plans around a few builders. Re: I have a house plan, where do I go from here? 3Jan 21, 2014 9:54 am Knowing where you are is a big help. I'd go see a capable draftie or building designer and get some feedback from them about possible pitfalls in your design or changes they'd recommend and a ballpark figure to build it. Ask to see some of their previous jobs and how much they ended up costing to build. Stewie That drawing’s in the old units. The sewer tie is 1.44m deep and 4.5m offset from left boundary however the levels were taken ages ago so the surface level will have… 1 3547 i thought the flipped plan initially but bec i want narrow pathway from entry to dining (dont like bend), also cannot fit the… 7 12847 5 7307 |