touchingcloth

Hello all ,

Would really appreciate some advice please.

To any who have built through a building company such as Porter Davis, Metricon etc....

Can one buy a plot of land on an estate on the provision that the estate approves the plans of a home? (i.e get approval in writing from the estate)

and does this work the other way....

Would a home builder provide detailed plans of a house so that one can get the plans approved by the estate, so that the land can be purchase?

Basically, I'd want to avoid being in a situation, where I end up buying some land, but the estate won't approve my dream home.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

TC

Ceri

I'll bump up your message, and perhaps someone who has bought in the new estates can answer you on the restrictions that they have.

I have built , bought a plot of land and then went and got a builder and designed my own "dream" home - but it is not in these new mass built up estates - no thank you, it's just not my cup of tea

If you are worried about some of the estates restrictions ( which they should tell you about anyway when you want to buy the plot ),you could try buying ( if you can find one in the areas you like) some land which is not in one of these new estates - ie an old plot of land in an existing , established community , they tend to have less restrictions, and there is no time limit to build your house on it ( well in Qld anyway, I can't speak for the other states).

If you buy a newly released plot of land like in the new estates you must build on it within a certain time ( something like within 2 years ) . The government brought this law in quite recently, a few years ago , it was to stop people buying up plots of land for investment and just leaving the land vacant for years - This law does not apply to old existing plots of land, which were around before this law came in ( which my land was, I bought it privately off a bloke who had bought it years ago and never got around to building on it )
There was no time restrictions to build on my land , and there was no you must build this and that way, and can't build that ( It was subject to council approval of course). So you have all the time in the world to decide what home you are going to put on it etc, or design etc - there is no mad rush to build on it , so you can take it easy and take your time looking around at builders, and designing your home etc.

I have no experience of buying in one of these new built up estates, but a few of my friends have - and I know that some of these had rules like you can't build in wood or fibro ( not that you would want to unless you like that sort of thing) on some of them, and a few other rules depending on the estate - and they had to build on it within a certain time due to the state government laws on time limits .

The plans for any home gets approved by the council. You or the building company, or the estate etc submits the plans for your home to the local council - They approve the home. The rules in some of these estates are their own rules - and I think you are agreeing to some of their rules when you buy that plot from them too. It's the council who approves the building plans of all homes

cheers

sassie

Not sure I can offer any advice, but this is our position anyway. We bought a block of land from one of these new estates, after we had chosen our dream home. We had already chosen the estate we wanted to build in, but getting the right block, i.e .big enough to suit our needs meant we had to sit tight for a few months. Eventually, the perfect block became available. However before signing anything we took the plan to the guy in the sales office to make sure the house would fit, etc. I should mention that the display house we had chose was actually on the estate we had bought our block, so we knew there wouldn’t be any problems. With regard to restrictions, covenants, etc, the only ones imposed were:

The house had to be rendered
The roof had to be colorbond
The roof pitch had to be 25 degrees
Had to have a Water Tank installed (which the land developers provide)
House had to be setback 6m (although I think this might be pretty much standard for any new build)
Construction has to start within 9 months of land purchase.


And that’s all I can really think of.

We hopefully start building in a couple of weeks. We’re also getting a pool installed, which will be dug out before the house construction actually starts. What they do is they dig the shell out, put a temporary fence around it, and leave it until the house is finished, and then come back and finish the job.

Regards