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I've had this silly idea and need some info on kit homes.
What do you get? What are the hidden cost? What has to be done by someone else (the cost) and what can be done yourself?
Am I completely mad? What other options are there?
Your experiences? Dramas? Do it again?
Thanks :D
We looked into the stone home kit homes a few years ago.
At first we thought it would work out to be a good price. Then after talking to the salesmen we were soon turned off (not a very good salesman I guess). For the price quoted all we were getting was pretty much a shell. No flooring, no internal wall coverings, no plumbing, no electrical, no lighting no kitchen, no bathrooms and no concrete foundation.
They of course can do all these for you but it then gets very pricey. He did say you can apply to be an Owner/builder and then you can sourse your own tradesmen and get better prices.
It all just seemed to much trouble for us so we ended up just buying a ready to go house. I do however now have a BIL who has just completed his building certificate and we have been talking about it again. If you know a few tradies then it would definately help.
Just adding, this was for a stonehome kit, I don't know how other types work because we were only interested in stonehomes.
Kit homes are just that a KIT lol
you usually only get a shell so its a house to lock up, you then need to complete the inside as you woudl with any home you buy off a plan.
We are looking at one which is 60 grand for teh shell we then figure teh rest will be about 60-80 grand for internals.
You can do 90% of it if you do an owner builders course.
you will need a sparky for all electrical and a plumber for all plumbing especially where you connect to mains.
you will then need carpets or tiles, kitchen and bathrooms.
the one we looked at came with plaster for internal walls.
you can also look at relocatable homes depends where you are as to who you look at though.
we are in mackay and tropical homes do some good ones which they kit out and basically your house arrives on a truck.
With kits homes allow about 6-12 month for it to be done especially if your working as well and weather.
it is a good idea and does come in cheaper than building a home with say GJ Gardner, but its alot of hard yakka and time
They are virtually impossible to get a loan for and all the expense in a house is in the interior which as per above isn't included, so whatever they are advertised for - double it and then some, unless you have some really good contacts in the building industry or you are a tradie yourself.
We are building a transportable/relocatable (which are harder to get loans for too, but not impossible) and I lost count of the number of times we heard "its not a kit home is it? We don't give loans for kit homes".
MIL owner built. If you just buy the plans, it's a project home, your owner building. I don't think the had issues getting a loan but she did have a big deposit ( >50%)
ETA: she bought a Peter Lees plan and built a solid stone loft house
An alternative would be a prefabricated home that is basically made in a factory and transported to your site. They're fully finished, you just need to put furniture in them. They can be completed in around 12 weeks so you basically save on building costs and all the headaches of arranging tradies. BUT, they're not cheap - the ones we were looking at were quoting $2K per square metre.
We're now looking at converting a shed (9m x 6m) into a granny flat. They can look quite funky if you do them properly and from preliminary research, I think they can be done for about $1K per square metre. Building seems to be quite simply. We'd be relocating our existing shed so we just need to get a new slab poured, move the shed and get it insulated/lined by a builder/chippie and ditto internal walls.
We had our prefab delivered a few weeks ago. It was MUCH cheaper than a brick house on site, was well under $1000 a square metre. They build them in 6 weeks but it takes 9-10 months to get council approval, finance, pick your colours etc. And then there were all the headaches of arranging tradies to finish the place off (although the builder can arrange that it costs more than doing it yourself), so almost the opposite to what fionas said :)
We got a prefab with a LOT of extras (higher ceilings, fancy kitchen benches, fancy cornices yada yada) which added about $20k to the list price of the house so we could have got it for about $90k in the end. This is a 4 bedroom 2 bathroom 2 living area house.
Congrats - sounds terrific!
Can you PM me the name of the company you used. Would be interested to compare to the companies we've been looking at.
Hope you're enjoying your new home.
Done!
Yeah, the house is great :D We were in a small cottage with one bathroom before and it is SO good being able to sloth around in our own ensuite while the kids each hog the other toilet, bathroom and vanity doodat. Before we got the furniture in Miss 3 was trying to claim our WIR as her bedroom.
But the best thing - Mr 1 now has his own bedroom and he sleeps through the night fairly often now, we never had a night with less than 3 wakeups before he had his own room.
We want to do this down the track. Can I ask who you went through?
Our builder is only in South Australia (although they apparently bought another company in QLD) so if you're not in SA it won't help you ...
Also, in the entire year we were dealing with them, they returned a phone call ONCE. Every other time I had to phone them 4 or 5 times until I hit the person I wanted actually in the office, since they don't listen to their voicemail or the receptionist never passes on messages or something.
Ah, I see.
Nope, I'm in Melbourne. Glad it worked out for you in the end :)
Thanks for the PM RumpledElf - much appreciated.