Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Oct 05, 2017 8:59 am Last year we bought a block of land on the Central Coast of NSW and have since had to move abroad for my husbands work (which clearly wasn't the plan at the time)..... Has anyone get any experience/advice/ on whether or not we could or should build while overseas? We are at a catch 22 as don't really want to rent out a brand new house but the rent would cover the whole mortgage or do we just pay a loan on the land with no rental income until we know when we will come back to Oz (around 3-4 years) How long do you have to find the issues with the house? Are they easy to find if I was to come back and look around for a week after the build? Or do you need to live in it to really find out what any issues may be. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!! Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 2Oct 05, 2017 9:01 am I'm currently living in a brand new house that we rent. As a tenant, I had to let the owners know if there were any maintenance issues related to the build, including things as small as doorknobs falling off to cracks appearing in the ceiling. If you have a decent property manager and good tenants I don't see a huge problem. We had 3 months to report issues. Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 3Oct 05, 2017 11:23 am If you just keep land you will sit on an appreciating asset but no income with rates as expenses and interest on land loan. If you build you will sit on a larger appreciating asset but also a larger mortgage, however income from rent may pay for much of the mortgage. If you do build make sure you have your pre-contract review and independent inspections at the critical stage of your build. Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 4Oct 05, 2017 11:28 am Have you considered the possibility of selling the land? Otherwise, I don't know.. I think building while overseas isn't too big a deal if you have a good builder and an inspector. People do it. Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 5Oct 05, 2017 4:30 pm From our experience of building while we lived in a house 4 doors up from the site, there's absolutely no way I'd get something built while overseas. Not unless I was never going to live in it, was going to sell it, and was going to employ someone like building-expert (a few posts above) to continually be inspecting (which in my experience quite a few project builders won't accept & in fact you need to make sure it's in the tender or there's a good chance they won't allow a 3rd party inspector onsite). Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 7Oct 06, 2017 2:25 am Thanks everyone for your responses. I really appreciate it. So hard to know what to do especially when we don't know when we will be home! We did think of selling the land but I really don't want to get out of the market as prices are still going a little crazy. I think we Would make a better profit if we were at least able to build....and then possibly sell. But again we will still need to buy something else which also adds the stamp duty. I think we may hold off in in for maybe a year and then decide what to do. Thanks again everyone Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 8Oct 06, 2017 6:52 am I don't know about your experience Forg but it is not necessary to continually inspect the house whilst it is being built, critical stage inspections are usually sufficient. I have been doing this for about 12 years now and from my experience the following inspect5ions will give you good result and are a sweet spot between price and value: Pre contract review, pre slab, frame, pre plaster and pre final = 5 inspections around 3K for an average size home.You don't need someone on site blundering about and hanging around growing vegies. In Vic builder cannot restrict how many times you or your agent can visit the site but it must be done at a mutually convenient time because the builder has a licence to occupy the site and is responsible for site security and visitor safety. Only once we had 7 inspections from lockup to final due to a bad builder, we got there in the end with builder refunding my client all inspection fees + compensation. Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 9Oct 06, 2017 3:43 pm Well ... to give an example, as an inspector would you think to pull the gyprock & check whether the insulation had been installed in the garage wall? I was walking past on the way to work one morning, and noticed from the previous day that half the gyprock had been installed ... with no sign of the insulation behind. Called the site supervisor, next day the gyprock was down again, day after there was insulation in there. I can't think of them all now, but there were plenty of those sorts of things, and I'm assuming it's 'cos the site supervisor has 40 builds to cover so can't watch what all the tradies are doing onsite every day. Then there's Old Faithful builder charges $100 per downlight, spec your electricals so there's enough wiring by the builder then pay the sparky $30 per downlight. There were just plenty of things which would've gone down badly had we not been local. Plus we got dozens of questions during the build; you definitely have to be accessible to answer questions. Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 10Oct 06, 2017 4:00 pm Forg Well ... to give an example, as an inspector would you think to pull the gyprock & check whether the insulation had been installed in the garage wall? I was walking past on the way to work one morning, and noticed from the previous day that half the gyprock had been installed ... with no sign of the insulation behind. Called the site supervisor, next day the gyprock was down again, day after there was insulation in there. I can't think of them all now, but there were plenty of those sorts of things, and I'm assuming it's 'cos the site supervisor has 40 builds to cover so can't watch what all the tradies are doing onsite every day. Then there's Old Faithful builder charges $100 per downlight, spec your electricals so there's enough wiring by the builder then pay the sparky $30 per downlight. There were just plenty of things which would've gone down badly had we not been local. Plus we got dozens of questions during the build; you definitely have to be accessible to answer questions. You get a pre-lining inspection done so the insulation has been done but not the gyprock. Building Monte Carlo 40- Wisdom homes Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 11Oct 06, 2017 5:01 pm As MandM+4 said, you get a chance to inspect insulation at pre plaster inspection. I use thermal imaging camera which will show any heat transfer through ceiling and if there are gaps in ceiling insulation. Several times I was hired to set up thermal imaging check of walls where there was a dispute and yes it picked up missing batts. We recommend 4 inspections during the build because it is the sweet spot between price and value, however there is always a chance of something not being picked up but having someone there all the time is not feasible. It works really well in the vast majority of cases. We don't have mandatory pre plaster inspection in Vic so no one will know if your frame was damaged, insulation is missing, wet areas waterproofed properly or in the case of units fire separation walls built correctly. Just last week I found defective fire separation wall. Foremost Building Expert in Australia,assisting with building problems/disputes, building stage inspections,pre-contract review advice for peace of mind 200 blogs http://www.buildingexpert.net.au/blog Re: YES or NO to building while living overseas!!! HELP PLEA 12Oct 07, 2017 6:54 am Everything seems so scary to me at the moment!! I would definitely have someone there to check it over at those 4 major stage you suggest. I think we will wait for 1 year and keep hold of the land and figure out when we will be home and go from there. Thanks again for your input. I really appreciate it 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 24315 Thanks. There are plenty of builders around my suburb. 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