Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 24, 2014 11:18 am Has anyone done in this way? For example, finish the design first and use it to find builders. A friend told me $$$ can be saved when different builders bid on your design. Let a single builder do everthing, including design may be easier, but you may pay extra $$$, especially when custom design is needed. Re: design first and find a builder later? 2Mar 24, 2014 12:02 pm We initially tried to use a builder to do everything, starting with a custom design we tried to describe to them. It came back way over budget, like 1.5x (and the budget we gave them was probably excessive for the area anyway). I think the problem was that the builder was a builder, not an architect. Plus they seemed to be set-up to take a set of ideas, draw it once, tweak it slightly & that-was-that; every time we asked if X was possible or how about Y, he'd go & get a full set of plans drawn rather than roughing it out first. If we were taking the custom-design approach, I think we'd get an architect to draw something up & then pimp it around a few builders (in the end we went with a project home, which of course introduces a whole bunch of other potential problems). Re: design first and find a builder later? 3Mar 24, 2014 12:29 pm We attempted to do this... we struggled finding a design we liked in it's entirety and decided to just sketch up our own. We got something drafted up and took it to about 4 builders who would do custom designs, the results were of course varying. But it was easier to have something that we could "shop" and compare, plus we added a list of upgrades we knew we would be having and to have those costed in also, so we could get a better idea of the overall cost it would wind up as. Makes it easier to compare apples with apples. We ended up wandering through a display village we'd never seen before on a trip out to the other side of Adelaide one day, walked through a home and fell in love straight away. So we kind of abandoned our own plan - which on reflection was waaay too big for our needs anyway, and went with the one we fell for that day. Doesn't always work out that easy though... haha Thread: viewtopic.php?f=31&t=66299 Slab: 16/6/14 Frame: 4/7/14 Roof: 22/7/14 Lock Up: 20/8/14 Fixing: 26/8/14 PCI: 9/10/14 Handover: 20/10/14 The estate Covenants (design requirements) must be included in the land contract. If you purchased a resale block then the vender is required to provide/include a copy… 2 9162 Yep, very good point. I’ll do more research and see what figures I get. Thank you! 8 2462 ideal house depends on the site and location as much as internal floor plan....what is the distance from the house to all four boundaries, where is north, describe your… 3 10209 |