Where to start - buying land and building

[kimmi]

Has the land been approved to subdivide? The thing is, to subdivide, it costs a FORTUNE. All of the local council, and state government fees can cost tens of thousands of dollars. If the current land owner has already gone though this process, you are ok, but if not, it could make it very expensive to subdivide.

Have a look into the town planning records for that particular block.

[LizLemon]

Has the land been approved to subdivide? The thing is, to subdivide, it costs a FORTUNE. All of the local council, and state government fees can cost tens of thousands of dollars. If the current land owner has already gone though this process, you are ok, but if not, it could make it very expensive to subdivide.

Have a look into the town planning records for that particular block.

Yeah that too - I wasn't sure if you had already covered off on that. In some cases the council may have already determined that all blocks in a certain area are to remain a certain size and they can't be subdivided further - they are generally covered by town planning schemes and should be available for you o check.

[~Raven~]

Has the land been approved to subdivide? The thing is, to subdivide, it costs a FORTUNE. All of the local council, and state government fees can cost tens of thousands of dollars. If the current land owner has already gone though this process, you are ok, but if not, it could make it very expensive to subdivide.

Have a look into the town planning records for that particular block.

They may have it zoned that the area can't have blocks subdivided smaller so look into that and too if that's part of the plan

The costs for excavation can blow out massivly - as an example, as they dug into our block, they found rock and had to use a form of dynamite to blow it out. Would have been a massive hidden extra for us, but we had fixed costs so the builder had to wear it.

WOW seriously you lucked out with that builder They usually don't like to fix any site costs without a soil test which would have found that!

[Miss.September]

LOL Raven, they were are horrible builder from start to the end to us, and the dynamite blow must have really got up their nose cost wise. The stupid bit for them was the entire estate belonged to them, an exclusive *insert builder's name here* estate and they still had no idea how much rock is here - in the entire area. I think they were just wanting to sell the blocks, get it moving (even though when we bought the entire estate was still one big untouched paddock with cows on it), so every site in stage one had site costs included.

[deletedit]

We're building at the moment - normally you get land pre-subdivided, but we subdivided it ourselves (18 months for that).

Then we started building. Found a nice floorplan, too easy. List price of the house has ABSOLUTELY NO RELATION to what you pay for the final product, unless you're getting an it-comes-with-everything house and land package. Basically the price in the brochures is the house, with the most basic fittings and fixtures, built on the most stable soil known to mankind on a perfectly flat block. This kind of block doesn't actually exist.

So add $20k for the slab, $10k for carpets, $10-30k upgrading nonsense inside the house unless you really do want the most basic of basic stuff, then you've got extras for the 6 star energy rating in some states that also isn't in the price ($10k for solar hot water and a tank, for us), then driveway, landscaping, fencing and window dressings.

Our list price was $85k, final price for the house was $140k, if that's any indication. We upgraded the kitchen, ceiling height, skirtings, cornices, doors, door furniture, exterior window surrounds, some extra powerpoints and lights, awnings over the western windows and even added some extra doors where they just had 'openings' before. That's without any exterior landscaping. We already paid for the side/rear fencing as part of the subdivision and are expecting to add another few thousand in the first year for a carport and fence between the house and side fences to keep the kids in.

It has been exactly one year since we signed up with the builder and we still don't have a house, but then it took us 6 months of waving our $50k deposit and paid-off land at banks before one of them caved and deigned to give us a loan. And we're getting a transportable with an 8 week guaranteed build time, which puts 6 months of chasing for a loan to pay for the damn thing in perspective.

Edit: ooh, check their inclusions for electricity connection and sewer. Trenching can get expensive and they tend to allow for only like 2m of trenching or something when your house is 20m from the electricity or sewer line.