ginaf

I know a lot of folks on here are having houses built but has anyone had one custom built to their own design?

We are off to Sydney and are looking to buy a plot of land with a knockdown on and then in consultation with people "in the know", looking to play a large part in the design of the house. Has anyone else done this and are the costs vastly more different than having a project home built of a similar size?

Thanks

Britishaussie

I too would be interested in the responses to this question, we are planning to buy some acreage and build a house of our own design.

JaneandJim

It depends on the standard of the builders. We originally budgeted $350K with a high quality project builder and a similar house with a high quality bespoke builder would have come in at $450k. Send WOL a PM. He's just about to start building his own design in NSW. He had to jump through thousands of hoops just to get planning permission.

Jane

jad n rich

Its what partner does for a living along with consulting on large projects such as units etc.

The costs are nothing like a project home, a project home is a mass produced product with one aim in mind building generally as cheap as possible. You may have read how many people have been unhappy with their project home, you get what you pay for basically.

Cost usually escalate too as to warrant designing your own home the land is usually special too, You wouldnt generally bother going to all this cost in a housing estate. So the land is often sloping or steep to get a view, or an acerage property near a city, or a piece of land with an older house in a city centre/beach front which will cost an absolute fortune, somewhere where spending untold will be recouped.

If you buy sloping land in a normal area tho, beware, most project homes will not suit (slab on ground construction) and you will be up for extra costs make sure area warrants it.

Wol

Yes, as someone said, we are in process of building to our own design. We started with an architect, but she was so useless we gave her the push and went to a draftsman with the plan we had originally sketched out in some detail as a guide to the architect as to the sort of thing we had in mind.

The first thing is to get the land - any well-designed house must be designed around a particular site or you are wasting the advantages the site may offer.

We got council approval in around 7 weeks: had to provide site analysis and the likes to satisfy the busybodies in the council. They had several weird ideas such as not allowing attached garages (please someone, tell me the rationale behind THAT!) which we had to apply for variances to. <grammar....>

Anyway, we chose local builder who has been first class in getting quotes, organising etc. It's certainly not the cheapest way to go, but in the end we will get what we want rather than someone else's ideas.

We started bulldozing the site this morning: the portapotty is istalled and all seems well with the world!

ginaf

Thanks for the responses. Husband seems to think you can buy a plot of land and put anything you like on it. The responses seem to confirm that this is certainly not the case.

Wol - that is really interesting, thanks. I hope it all goes smoothly for you, it sounds like things should move swiftly from now on. Having a problem with an attatched garage seems like a completely bizarre issue to want to raise. Do you know of any where I can view general council guidelines on building regulations for NSW (Sydney area)? I.e I am interested to know what the guidelines are as to distances the house has to be from the boundary and roughly what size house you can generally put on specific sized land?

Britishaussie

Gina - sounds like you and I have similar requirements, also we have similar husbands! Hope you don't mind if I ask a few questions, maybe we'd both benefit from the answers?

Wol - I thought an architect was the first port of call when designing a house? Why did you go to a draughtsman? Do they do the same job? Do you still need an architect after the plan has been draughted?

Also, we are planning on buying some acreage out of town when we eventually get over to Oz, not just a one acre block in a suburb, and wondered if you knew if the planners are a bit less restrictive if you're not in a built up area?

Glad it's going ahead anyway and hope the build goes smoothly!

Wol

We went to the architect first, with ideas from several houses we've had and bits that worked and bits that didn't. She sat on her butt for 6 weeks, waiting for divine inspiration. Eventually we said what's going on, an she concocted a plan in 36 hrs that was unreal - the utility was the other side of the house from the kitchen, for example. Since we had a fair idea of what we wanted and are old enough and ugly enough to design it ourselves, we built a model, designed the plan, dimensioned it and a draughtsman drew up the detailed building plans and elevations etc. As well as giving a lot more input and help than the architect!

As regards the local council requirements, I can only suggest going to their website and looking at their Local Development plan, building guidelines, requirements etc. if you are still sane, visit the office, talk to as many people as you can - especially people who've done the same thing - and then have an interview with the area planner. They can often steer you on the right track.

The most important thing is to talk talk talk to local: you will get the vibes about which builders to avoid, which tradesmen are good etc. You will always be able to get a lower price, but it may well come at a (final) cost. Beware that building costs may seem a lot lower than the UK, but materials and construction standards may well be below what you are used to, and if you want the quality you will pay quite a lot more than the bottom quotes.

donna

I dont know if we just got lucky,but we meet a bloke(Neighbour)whilst looking at a block of land,he asked us what kinda house we were looking to build,i ran through a whole list of requirements ,he said give me a couple of days and i will draw up some plans as i used to be a draftsman.True to his word he did and he had incorporated everything we had asked for,it was perfect.Got a few quotes in and picked a builder.Definitely not the chearest option but when we looked at spec homes they either didnt suit the block of land or us.
Good Luck
donna (the neighbour and his family have turned out to be the best)

Gjn200

I did mine myself on microsoft visio, gave it to the builders and they did the proper plans from it. Cost £0 even visio was a copy.

cresta57

Yep we did the same but used a prog. called "Punch Home Design" Deb knew what she wanted we knew how much we could afford and worked everything into the plan. We gave the same plan to three builders and got varying quotes, opting for the best build quality middle price. It helped that we work on new builds and see a huge amount of designs some good others very bad. We chose the good bits from several similar homes.

Gjn200

Yep same here.

Britishaussie

Thanks Wol, I guess the so-called "professionals" aren't as good as they like to think they are then. Hubby has draughting skills but don't know whether we have the right tools to design detailed building plans on Mastercam, but hopefully somehow we'd be able to come up with a good design and get a draughtsman to draw it up properly to show to the builders. The house we want to build is not an Australian style but would still be a fairly simple design and has aspects in common with Australian style so hopefully it won't be too difficult.

As for building and construction standards, I already live in a typical British jerry-built house (well, it certainly seems so!) in the UK which is mainly timber framed so anything the Aussies can do is bound to be better than we have at the moment. (McLean Homes were doing everything on the cheap during the time my house was built in the late 60s ).

Ozzidoc

Good luck with everything - an exciting but stressful time, I'm sure.

Wol

Thanks: cutting ground was the signal for the heavens to open! And it is set to continue for several days - Sydney had it's wettset September day in 120-odd years. The site is a quagmire this morning.

Same thing happened down the road a month or two ago: months of nil rain, the footings were dug and - bingo! - down camethe rain and the foundations turned into lakes.

Perhaps that's the answer to Sydney's water shortage - build a few housing estates near Warrgamba dam and down will come the water as soon as the ground is cut!