scrawni

We are thinking about building our own home once we hit Queensland but has anyone already done this?

Could anyone make a good recommendation on a builder. Our decision will be based on price, if it cost too much then we may have to forget it. Never built before so the thought is a wee bit scary!

Mandy

ABCDiamond

Think VERY carefully, and talk to lots of people who have done this, before you decide to give it a go. Many people find the stress involved can be extreme, however, you can cut the cost down considerably by organising everything yourself.

Whingin Pom

Aren't all builders hard to pin down, never on time, allways changing the cost, behind schedule.

You should look at some of the houses they have built first before enlisting their services and spending your husbands hard earned money.

Ceri

There are plenty of display villages here, so you can walk around each house from each building company to get an idea of their quality and craftsmanship. House prices vary, in other words you get what you pay for. You can build for as low as $150,000, $160,000 with some of the well known big building companies (this includes driveway, landscaping etc) and then upwards.

Some building companies advertise as low as $120,000 etc for a 4 bed .. but realistically add about $25 to $40 thou on top of any advertised costs you initially first see advertised.

Costs - all building companies I know of give you a final price on the contract you sign , they are not allowed to change that price on the contract by law. They will also give you a start date (subject to soil test) and a completion date. If they go over the completion date they have to pay you for each day they go over (around $15 a day.. again this is by BSA laws).

Anyway, you can build quite cheaply, or as expensive as you want, the sky's your limit. The trouble that you are going to find at the moment is finding a decent size plot of land for a decent price. Land prices have shot up something terrible in the past two years. You may as well call this a land boom not a housing boom (it's the cost of land that has made existing houses expensive)

Stress of building - depends on you. You can either bung up a display house with no changes and let the builders get on with it, or design the house yourself, ie scrap their plans completely... which is stressful I can tell you, but it's worth it in the end.

I'll quote my friends house price and not mine (or you'll have a heart attack at the final price of ours) as he bunged on a display home (like many people do here) and made no changes, your average basic house , it cost him around $150 thou for a 4 bed, two bathroom. This didn't include landscaping and cost of land which was $55 or $65 thou for the land about two years ago (now selling for around $150,000 to $200,000 the same plots of land in his street. (acreage - Morayfield) - so all up he paid about $200 thou for his land and house (to buy his home off him it would cost you about $370,000 - so building is still cheaper than buying an existing house) .. if he were to do exactly the same thing today,buy his exact plot of land and build today it would cost him about $300 thou as the cost of the plots by him have risen in price.


Hope that is of some help to you. Don't worry about it, you can build as cheap as you want and make it as least stressful as you want... it depends on what you build.

Not to confuse you, so to sum it up - Averagely speaking, in today's prices, a basic 4 bed can cost you a little less than $200 grand to build with the big building companies , a plot , lets say a "decentish" size about 800 or 900 sq metres (anything smaller is too small in my opinion) will be anything from $120,000 to the sky's your limit (depends on the location)


cheers

Chris000

hi, i'm standing in kitchen of the house that we had built in Bris over looking hills and forest
.We chose a building company with good credentials who had house plans that you could choose,tweek to your own spec or design yourself.They started in July this year and finished two weeks ago.
Not too many dramas and a brill site manager.
All in all inc land price, we have a three bed house, with media room, ensuite inc spa bath, second bathroom and huge lounge room for just under $300.000.No the area isnt crappy, its on a golf crse designed by Greg Norman.
We have never built before, and not in the building trade.we have been in Aus eighteen months and have a brill investment for our retirement.(years away).not saying that there isnt sharks out there, but there are ways of protecting yourselves as much as poss.
Not as scary as it appears at the beginning, and what an opportunity to have the house of your dreams- not poss in the UK unless your surname is Windsor!!!!!
Trust your instincts.
.

bondipom

Construction boom coming to an end
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...337032985.html