Building a new house

[Mum2SweetCs]

Thanks heaps! I think we have steered away from building because everyone is saying how unpredictable the prices are.

Got scared when someone said that the site costs for escavation (sp?) can be as much as $30k on top if your land is not flat and rocky

[Pretty Butterfly]

Oh babe, I hope we didn't scare you off!!!!!!

Building your own house is amazing, I love it.

If your land is flatish, its no extra. And if you deal with all the extras at the start, and get them all put into your contract, it all gets done together, for a price you've already agreed on.
If you do your research, and dont let the builder push you, it can be easy and fun.

[~ Zarava Flutterby ~]

We are in the process of building at the moment, well the contracts are signed but still sorting a few things out.
We ended up needing a stronger slab than usual, also a tree root barrier ($11,000).. our price ended up being something like $18,000 over what we had originally estimated and thats not including air con, curtains etc.

It's very scary but i can't wait.. so what if i have to live with sheets on my windows for a while and a portable aircon in the lounge? lol
The girls will have curtains as they are at the front of the house and we have some nice ones for their rooms now anyway, DP is going to do the driveway himself and 2 sides of our block already have fences so am hoping we can get away with minimal costs there!

GL with it all, i would suggest either way you go have a look at display homes, ask whats included and go from there!

[LimeSlice]

yes - beware of Site works!
Generally they will allow $5k - however, tehy will never know what the ground is like until they begin - flat or not.

Ours unexpectedly got up to $17k for the site works alone! So bear in mind that this needs to be covered.

Shop around and take your time

GL!

[Cupcake]

Generally they will allow $5k - however, tehy will never know what the ground is like until they begin - flat or not.

You will need a soil test to go to contract, (atleast in QLD we do?) and the Soil Test will let you know what you are in for site works wise. Its part of our Preliminary Agreement to provide a Soil Test, not sure about other builders?

[LimeSlice]

Yep but unfortuntely the soil test wont always show things under the ground. Turned out we had a big hunk of sandstone in the middle of our block about 2 meters down or something. Everything was fine until they actually began site works

[Cupcake]

Our tests consist of 3 bore hole digs, 2 under the house and one under the pool going down 3m.

But i understand what you mean about finding nasty suprises! Always good to be prepared!

[Diamond Girl]

Hi we are building at the moment, so I can give you some advice.

First, forget the base price. There are so many extras you need unless you are purchasing a turn-key home package (even then there may be extras) that you probably dont even know you need yet. For example, the base price only includes the basic (plain) facade, but if you want a better one with a nicer brick or some render then you could be looking at an extra $30k. Also most builders dont provide overhead kitchen cupboards, so theres another $3k, and so on and so on.

Our $200k base price home is now well over $320k after including carpet, tiles, fencing, turf, etc. And our land is almost perfectly flat. If you have a slope at all I would add $10-30k to the price. Our home is double storey and 34 squares so if you were building a single storey it should be much cheaper than mine.

Good luck with your decision, Id speak to a builder and get them to give you an estimation, but just so your aware they never tell you about many of the extras you'll need.

[~Kim~]

First advice would be to check out what your local builders offer. Ours covered site costs up to $25K, all our floorings, tiles, aircon overhead cupboards, screens etc were covered. Ours wasn't a cent over the advertised price of the house.