Sandra

Right I am confused....a 1/2 acre plot...is what in square metres?

I am a bit fed up with estate agent speak and the meaning of large plot. Also I used to know houses in the UK in terms of square footage of space. Now trying to work out what is large in terms of square metreage!! Though I have noticed that if it is a small house estate agents suddenly revert to square footage to list that detail.

Please has anyone done the comparisons and willing to let me know - if not I shall have to calculator out and do it myself

Cheers

Ceri

http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~shane007/maths/area.html

Sandra

Brilliant thanks....PS I now know I live on a 0.25 acre (well a tad under - but not as small as they are trying to sell in sydney now)....might work out the house later..hee hee

Cheers

mashiraz

1/2 acre equals 2000 sqm. Anything over 700sqm is deemed large, yet the houses floor areas are large here (single story) and 700 sqm leaves you with a pocket hankerchief.

Having said that we have gone for nearly 1/2 an acre and it's alot of grass to mow and keep watered. But I love it

Mash...

hamiltonnz

To go from square metres to square feet multiply by 10. Its not exact but pretty close. So if a land agent says a house is 215m2 its about 2150 sq ft plus a tad more.

MartinD

The traditional 'Aussie Dream' is a quarter-acre block on a cul-de-sac and a double garage. Pretty much you will be hard-pressed to find any of these requirements these days, and the trend is towards more high-density inner city apartment living, and large houses on small blocks so that there is virtually no outdoor space to use - the house is built up to the boundaries.

We just built on a 835m Sq block, and being a 2 storey the house has less of a 'footprint' on the land. Even with a large swimming pool (12m long X 4.5m wide), we are still faced with over 250m Sq of paving, probably the same of grass, and spent a fortune having to retain and fence a wild side of the block. Beware - large blocks bring big hassles!

As the suburb we are in 'matures' (a whole 11 years old!) the remainging blocks are the awkward ones that have extreme slopes, are on the main roads, or lack views (or are overlooked). In order to get good quality land for a decent price you will find yourself a looooong way out of the city.

suz

Hi MartinD,

What do you call a ling way out of the city, 30 mins drive or further?

Suz

Sandra

Good information thanks - we have bought now, we did go looking for the cul-de-sac but couldn't afford that in our area, whilst also looking for house size etc. We rented a house in the same area and had nearly 0.45 of an acre or thereabouts - huge garden and we did nothing with it. So when looking at buying we scaled down on land and went for brick house. We have a tiny piece of grass and the rest laid to paving and rock and pool! There is a patio on top of one of the pieces of rock! One of the reasons I asked the question is that I do get asked this question by friends (think everyone lives in aussie ranches in the outback) who are not on expats and I always sort of wondered on sizes and 'normal' if there is such a thing now for Aus. I was very surprised that new houses on estates are selling 500 sm and less for building, huge mansions and tiny plot - reminded me of some of the burbs in Vancouver. Some of the mulitple familys have quarter acres houses!

We had a good estate agent explaining thing here but when talking to other home owners and investors lots of people talk the value of a house in terms of 'capital growth' so basically another version of nice house worth more! The main indicators seem to be here where I am

flat plot
big frontage
quiet road
easy access

not an awful lot of value is put on the house unless you have recently built. Our house is oldish 33 years. Location Location to be able to pull down and rebuild is a main factor.

I really like hearing on this site what makes or takes from a house - for me although we have none of the above factors we love the house/location and plot. It takes allsorts I suppose.

Cheers

Badge

just like to reiterate that frontage - the dimension say bordering the road is important to cost/ desirability?

If a traditional block is 1/4 acre ie. 1000m sq then perhaps the plot may be 15*66, or 10*100 etc .. you'd maybe want the dimension of frontage to be larger/less than the depth...

Now when you look at kit homes, say, you need to look at the width and depths to ascertain for a start which "way" to build it - so which part of the house faces the road - frontage - and the position of the sun during the day will also effect which way you should to build it...so living areas stay out of afternoon sun etc

badgers

cadman

Seen a lot of property floor areas/plot sizes described in "squares" e.g. "22 squares"

I believe 1 "Square" = 9.3 square metres (we worked it out)

Anyone seen/confirm this?