stacey and jordan

Can someone help to explain the In's and outs of building your new home. I don't know where to start!!! We live on the Gold Coast, over the weekend we went around a few Home and land packages to see what was out there. Fell in love with a house display by Coral homes. Didn't like the land they had to offer(didn't like where it was situated), but have seen a few land for sale we like on realestate.com would this be a problem. This is where i get confused Money do you pay out for the land straight away, house do you pay out for that straight away or at the end. If so does that make getting a mortgage complicated. Do people still have to pay there rent whilst house is being built. Someone mentioned to me that some builder help towards the cost of your rental, and this way the house is built on time. I'm starting to think it would be easier to just buy a ready built house. But don't want to give up on my husbands dream of having our own house built at the first hurdle.

can anyone help.

Stacey xx

curly

Sorry can't help Stacey, just agreeing with you about Coral homes, we also fell in love with one last year! So I'll be interested in the info you get too. We are also settling on the Gold Coast.

cresta57

Buying a house & land package from a spec builder is only one option, you can also buy your own block of dirt and still get a spec home built on it. That way you can choose the block you like from a much wider choice. When you buy a block it's the same as buying a home or a car you either buy outright or you arrange finance. If you need a mortgage to buy your block the lender may require a larger deposit and insist on soil tests to confirm foundation/slab costs.
With regards to engaging a builder to build you home you can just choose one and go with their fixed price design/plan or you can design your own layout and approach a builder who will give you a price to build your design. Shop around and compare like for like.
When it comes to contract you need to have the necessary finance available. You can sign subject to finance being approved but nothing will start until you have the finance in place. A lender usually pays for the construction via staged payments. Most builds are structured into the following stage payments;
1.Site costs, searches & council planning approval.
2.Slab [when the footings earthworks & slab is finished]
3.Frame [when the frame is erected & the roof is on]
4.Lock up [when the frame is clad and exterior doors are fitted]
5.Fix out [when your doors, skirting's architrives kitchen etc. is installed]
6.Final [work completed and you have done the final walk through inspection]
Lenders may require an inspector to inspect each stage prior to releasing the cash. He simply drives past and ticks the appropriate box[nice work if you can get it]
You begin to pay your repayments as soon as the lender makes the first stage payment, usually they hike up the interest rate a couple of % during the construction phase and then drop it when the completion certificate is released.

sassie

Hi Stacey. Yes building your own home can be very confusing, there are so many things to think about, so I’ll try and help as best I can, based on our experience.

First of all, I wouldn’t buy a house and land package, after having seen loads and loads go up around where we are, they tend to use the cheapest materials, i.e. fixtures, and fittings, carpets, tiles, etc and you have no say in colour selections, unless of course you buy off the plan, and then you would have some involvement.

Secondly, the display homes you have been looking at, don’t be fooled by the price that is quoted. To get to the spec of those homes, you could easily add another $40,000 to $50,000 on top.

Just as an example, the house we chose had two prices, “base price” and “as displayed” price. The “base price” was about $154,000 and the “as displayed” price was $204,000. We chose the “as displayed price”, simply because we could see exactly what we were getting and on top of that, we upgraded quite a few things as well, so our final contract price came in at $219,000.

If you are still at the looking stage, I recommend having a look at Richards Homes, who have displays all up and down the coast. We built with them and had no problems whatsoever and they have some really nice designs.

There is tons of land still available, even up where we are at Jacobs Ridge, they are still developing it, so I would recommend having a look around at various land developments. When you buy the land, you pay the money at settlement. I am not sure if the settlement time varies, but we had 3 months, I think the norm is about 1 month. When you contract to build a house you pay in stages. You pay a deposit when you sign the contract (ours was 5%), and then after every stage is completed, i.e. slab, framework, lockup, fixout, completion. Theres usually about 6 payments to make.

I am not sure whether some builders help with the rental or not, I would probably say this wasn’t the case. However, I do know that a lot of builders give you a timeframe for completion, and if they have not completed by that date, then they will pay you a certain amount each day until its finished to cover the rent that you would not normally have had to pay had the completion date been met. They obviously factor in plenty of time for the build, taking into account public holidays and wet weather, so I don’t think this happens very often.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Gina

wargod

From what I have seen builders do help with renting, however this normally happens if they go over the specified build time and there are a list of get out clauses too- for instance some may say. Guaranteed build time of 20 weeks small print being only low set houses, off plan (i.e no alterations) and to a maximum of $200 per week etc etc

Antney

Hi, we built with Ownit Homes and I can honestly say that they made the whole build process bearable. There can be a difference between the contract price and the final amount, luckily for us the final price was $15,000 less than the contract price!!

PM if you want any more details about them.

walaj

we too are interested in the buy land, build house option. We have got an idea on cost of land, but have wild variations on what it would cost to build/fit it out. (we too not sure where to start or whom to approach at this stage)

I did come across this website the other night http://www.homedesigndirectory.com.a...stimator.shtml. Anyone with any insight to the accuracy of the costings, as it is more than we thought it would be?

flower33

Hi i am in the process of building with Coral Homes. We purchased a plot on the sunshine coast/Caloundra.

The price you see on the glossy brochure will not include things like drive way,lighting, fencing, landscaping, the list goes on. The base price was approx $125k then when we added extras it ended up neareer $164. A big diff, and this still did not enclude land scaping, retaining wall,fencing and drive way. I also have to pay for the lighting fixtures and fans.
The process can take around 9 months from start to finish, this includes initial soil tests and plans being approved. Coral have been great in some areas and okay in others, overall so far so good.
We are at the stage of having the slab put down, think we have to wait another week to ten days, then its all systems go i think.

Good luck with what you decide to do.