astonmartinv8

Hello all,

First post, what a great site! I hope to be able to make a contribution.

We have visas and plan to move to Perth in early 2008, and to insure against the housing boom when we were there in February 2006, we bought a plot in Stirling, Perth, which completed in June.

We are in advanced discussions with Atrium Homes (any experiences anyone?) and are having plans produced / planning permission sought. House build costs have been increasing on an almost monthly basis and a pretty nice house we saw costing AU$420K to build in February is now at AU$475K in September, having gone up circa 2% per month.

Obviously this is not a very comfortable situation and I wondered what the latest feeling was in relation to the house builders market there. We are hoping the rate rise will cool things off, but could build prices actually fall noting the recent inflation and should we try to negotiate (again)?

Lastly, the house we are planning to build is the Atrium Lexington which is a two storey place at 404sqm. What would an equivalent place cost to build in other Australian cities compared to Perth?

Thanks all,

Marcus.

@boy

Living here in Melbourne for the last 4 years and the resource boon in WA over the last year or so has fascinated me to be honest.

Aus now has 2 distinct economies as a result, West Coast and East Coast.
Unfortunately, using interest rates to control inflation and house prices is a woefully blunt instrument and is having almost no effect on the west coast due to the ferocity of the demand for housing there.

In actual fact, Perth house prices jumped 11.9% in the June quarter - almost 4% per month for the last 3 months.

Most economists seem to believe there is another 2 years of boom in Perth before it busts but then others insist it will continue for another 5 or 10 years as long as there is great demand for the exports of the states resources and with Chinas growing demands, that seems quite likely.

The problem is fuelled by the influx of overseas and Eastern state workers flooding into Perth due to the mining boom and this demand is pushing property prices up even more.

If you have a plot and are close to building, I would say go for it now as I doubt the prices will drop any time soon.

Bets of luck and hope it works out.

Here's a useful link by the way....
http://www.aussiehome.com/trendCharts/

and also take a peek at this very recent article for what I believe is a very insightful analysis...
http://au.biz.yahoo.com/060824/27/uvr9.html

surfsup

That seems a lot we have plans for a 4 bed large house by Matthesons, I think, in Sydney area different styles all around 200k. You supply the land obviously.

biggy

are these two story buildings? You tend to find that a HUGE part of the budget for a two story house goes on scaffolding......its very very expensive.

Wol

Fairly obviously, it depends on the site, specs etc so comparing apples and mangos is not useful. But I would say that is not a lot for a 400sq m house. Our own build is about 380 sq m and is considerably more - works out at something over $2000 / sq m. But the foundation costs alone are a big chunk due to the sloping site, so..............

SEAL

Can't advise on Perth specifically but I work for a house builder in Melbourne. On a level, serviced site then a decent builder can provide a house from about $900 m2. You get what you pay for and costs can easily go up to a min of £1,200m2 even for a simple house. Check out what you are getting for the quote - landscaping can add $50/$70 m2, fencing $40 to $100 per m, air con from $5k etc ... etc.... From what uou have said the cost doesn;t seem too bad. One problem with Perth at present is that people are having to wait 12 months to get a house built started due to demand on tradies. If you have someone who can start now for that kind of price then go for it but just check what is included in the price.
good luck and congrats on the foresight in picking up a block early!

S.

sassenach

Im a brickie and i bekieve the market will stabalize ,we are already getting the screw put on us to drop rates per thousand ,this is the first indication of a slowing housing economy .Another rough guide is to look in the west australian on WED and SAT and look in the trades section and if there arnt many GRANO [concreters] jobs going it means it is slowin as they are the first on any house build .
Nevertheless we are still having trouble getting decent tradesmen and i personally would like to see it slow down ,so it gets rid of all the shite in the trade

julesandco

Hi there,

We are building SOR with a major builder. When we came over on our reccie in Jan/Feb 2005 we bought a lot of land and were interested in building a model with a Company called Novus.

In the nine months it took us to get uor visa and move permanently, the build cost of the Novus home had increased by $70,000 AND they wanted to hit us with a 5% levy for building in our chosen suburb!

We told them to go and take a hike and subsequently have designed a one-off better (in our opinion) and bigger house for less money - even after the extortionate 'extras' that we upgraded to at pre-start! Our new home with be 382m2 and cost $85 less than the Novus one was going to come in at with '2006 pricing'.

The land that we bought (740m2) has over doubled in value too, so we're pleased that we took the risk when we did.

Whatever you decide, good luck!

Jules x

julesandco

Sorry, forgot to mention, friends of ours are building with Atrium, although it's early days and their slab hasn't even been laid yet.

They seem OK with the pre-start though and haven't been complaing too much about their service levels.

Jules

astonmartinv8

Many thanks all for the responses all, very useful.

The price we have circa AU$475 for a 400sqm house works out to AU$1187 per sqm.

The following key things are excluded:

Landscaping
Aircon
Fencing
Wall painting

We are budgeting circa AU$100K for all of the extras - so expected case, we would see circa AU$1400-1500 per sqm, although we haven't specced any optional extras yet.

Any other observations or tips most welcome.

Best regards,

Marcus.

astonmartinv8

I should also mention that the pre-start with Atrium was truly excellent. Very helpful, very quick email responses, always under promised and over delivered. Exactly the opposite of another well known builder who we were fully intending to progress with until they just stopped responding when we pressed for drawings without a deposit.