PHONEJUNKY

Has anyone gone through the process of buying land and having a house built on it and in % was it cheeper than buying a house already built taking into account cost of land ,labour to build and all legal and planning fees.
What is the average saving in % against buying from a seller / estate agent ect.
I am looking at this route as house prices are not any cheaper than uk from what i can see but correct me if i am wrong.

killercat

Hi phone junky
have a look at tee browns posts as she has just built a new home in Rolleston and has put some great info and pics on the site. would put a link but not sure how to lol.
we are lso considering this option but gonna rent for a while to check out the areas.

killercat

think iv sussed it!

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=613549

alanmacc

Lots of people on here have done it, the thread you have covers most of it

PHONEJUNKY

Thanks all
I will have a good look later at tee browns thread.

Margaret Parkinson

My daughter Gail & son in law Doug had their own built last year I think it took 13 weeks altogether and they said it was painless. They we allowed to make alterations such as what they call pushing out walls that would call an extention. They had doors put on the lounge area all sorts of things to make it to their liking. Having now seen it I can understand why they are pleased.

CAN2NZ

Whether it is cheaper or not will in part be determined by your circumstances. If you are paying cash, it could well be cheaper. If you are paying in part with mortgage funds then you will have interest costs in addition to the rental you are in while it is being built. Also, at the moment, there is still room in many builder's schedules and so prices may b e better. However, it is hard to compare cost of buying/building if you are comparing various locations as in real estate location counts. Also, if you are building on a lifestyle block, you will likely pay a premium to the builders for transportation if your site is removed from the general urban area.

We built a house and moved in nearly two years ago. I am not sure if it would have been cheaper. It is hard to tell as we have a much larger home than most any in our area and with some extra features that other homes don't have. It is possible to buy some nice homes at the present at some good pricing. I have noticed in our area that prices are nearly back to where they were three years ago.

teebrown

Hi, our was slightly cheaper to build then to buy, but with building we got what we wanted, we choose everything so it was done to our taste. We were really lucky we bought the land great price right time, so our house will go up in value (not that we plane to sell anytime soon). It was very painless to build, but do take into consideration that you will have to pay rent for 'X' amount of weeks (ours was 15 weeks) whilst they build and you will have to pay interest on stage payments if you are having a mortgage, not a huge amount until you get to the last few weeks. We will definitely build again, I stand here now planning my garden and looking around thinking 'We did it', great feeling.

All the very best.

Tee

alanmacc

We looked at first to buy a house and did a few tours with estate agents, then came across Golden Homes who told us to go to Rolleston but said we would never get a house for our budget ......... Thanks Golden Homes . hahaha

As people have said if you build you get a lot of input and its all your choices, if asked if i would do it again, yes I would.

PHONEJUNKY

Thanks for all the replies and very nice build teebrown.
We should be coming to NZ around August time and renting for a while but i would like to look into have something built when we find the right place for us.
Is there anything we should look out for when starting out the process, ie do builders have master federations or such like to avoid cowboys. Are councils strict on type of houses you can build.
Thanks again