Building a new home and the cost? Extras? Please help!

We have been looking at moving, however in our price range my DH is thinking it may be better value to buy a knock down and build a single level house. The idea of it terrifies me and I have no idea whether it would be feasible or not. Of course we need to go to a homeworld type place and see how much it would cost. It is the extras that bother me, things that aren't included that we may not think of initially. We would have to live with our parents while building (eek!) and would have to pay storage costs for all of our stuff. No idea how much that would cost either. We would be paying a bigger mortgage while building but wouldn't have the costs of running a house (rates, electricity etc etc) , we would have to contribute to our parents some form of board. I would love to hear your experiences of building and whether you were surprised by the overall cost and any other things to be wary of.

Thanks!!!

Interested in this as we have decided to build new rather than renovate what we currently have. We got a quote to just add on extra to the living area and an ensuite to our bedroom and it came to almost $60k :o That was not including painting or bath fittings. From what we can gather doing a bit of research is that rebuilding will work out cheaper than a complete reno in the long run. Upside is that we get what we want, downside is that is can't be done a bit at a time, which is what we would do if we were renovating.

We're part the way through the building process and have lots to say on this, but DD has just woken up, so will be back later to talk more

Thanks, would love to hear what you have to say. This stuff is so confusing!!

Sorry to be a pain but anyone who has built it would be great if you could let me know things to be wary of. Thanks

Sorry for not having got back to this one - very late of me.

OK, so....

- don't take the price that you are given on the piece of paper when you go through the display homes as any kind of indication of what the final price will be on your home. Some builders will deliberately reduce the price to the barest minimum, while others opt for a more "realistic" price. But you'll only know the cost when you get the quote (or more likely at the end of the building process when all of the variations have come in!!)

- one thing that is quite commonly left out of these prices is the cost of the footings. Quite often the price included for these is the bare minimum and they won't know the exact price until the soil tests are done and a footing is designed for the house.

- things like- air con, heating, floor coverings, curtains, landscaping, driveways, footpaths, fencing, etc are all going to be additional things you'll need to add on.

- when you do your selections you might find that the things you like or prefer are more expensive, or that there's nothing in the standard range that appeals to you. All of these little things can add up to a fair amount.

That's all I can think of for now. Hope it's not sounding too negative, but just think you need a lot more up your sleeve for all the add ons that seem to sneak in.

Good luck with the decision!

Ill second everything that Star has said!
The walls dont even come painted in many new homes! lol
If you think it will be included, ask, because chances are it isnt.

Power points etc are a MASSIVE issue. They give you a single socket power point PER ROOM. So if you want doubles, it is extra, extra points themselves are about $125 EACH ...TV points, phone points are through Telstra - $300 for one and $150 each extra...

They will give you a hole for a dishwasher, but no floor coverings for it, so you get a big bare square of cemement. The plumbing for a DW is also extra.

The crossover (the part of your driveway that is actually off your property) is paved or cemented at your expense.

Site works are usually around 4-5K but can go anywhere up to $15K and you wont know until they do it.


WRT to knocking down and existing house and building on the land, the cost of demolition is not cheap. You will need to get the permits through council, and also pay for disposal of the old house waste. You will still have to pay council rates on the property (I just paid ours a couple of months ago and the slab wasnt even laid lol)
I would look very carefully into demolitions before going down this route. If you want to build, unless you have a substantial bank balance, I would suggest you are better off looking for new land.


Go to as many open house as possible, ask for their inclusions, ask for the prices. And the most important thing I found was not to get all gaa-gaa over a display home. They build the most expensive house with all the additions that arent included on the Big Bright Board price. ;)
Dont be scared to ask the stupid questions, and dont let them talk you into something you are unsure of.

Good luck! And if you have any other questions let us know :)

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WRT to knocking down and existing house and building on the land, the cost of demolition is not cheap. You will need to get the permits through council, and also pay for disposal of the old house waste. You will still have to pay council rates on the property (I just paid ours a couple of months ago and the slab wasnt even laid lol)
I would look very carefully into demolitions before going down this route. If you want to build, unless you have a substantial bank balance, I would suggest you are better off looking for new land.

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Thanks for that Limeslice, looks as though we had already been considering a lot of those areas.

We will be living on site whilst rebuilding, so rates will not be a problem. We spent ages looking and it was cheaper to buy a property with the right land, rather than just buying the land then buidling, also it gives us somewhere to live whilst we work all this out. We are hoping to not have to demo but to see about selling off the house, or even just let someone take it. If we have to demo, that will be fine, DH used to do that for a living and then we will try to recyle what we can and the local recylcing centre will take the rest. What we are doing will take time

If you are going to buy vacant land, especially in a new subdivision, carefully inspect the title before you buy. Your solicitor or even better, a surveyor can do this for you. Quite often, developers will put a bunch of covenants on the land that say what you can and can't build. Some are very, very restrictive i.e. you can only build a rendered brick house in a certain range of colours and in a certain style, with a tile roof that is a certain colour etc. etc. I've seen one couple who bought the dream block and had a wonderful timber house designed only to see that they couldn't build it because of a covenant on the title. The developer and/or council may also have rules as to whether you can live on site while building. The developer may think it will be difficult to sell the remaining blocks if there are caravans on some of the ones that are already sold, so they put a covenant on the land saying no caravans.

Best of luck with the building. I'll be interested to hear how it goes as I'm currently designing my own house.