Land vs House Design

I'm going to break this one down into two separate posts as there are two issues here: house design vs land and also all of the things you need to know when buying a block of land (see next post!). So most people would think of this as a no-brainer - location, location, location! And yes this is true, you need to know the location you want to be in. And I would say to you if location is your main concern then go with that, but also be prepared to compromise on certain things in your house design to be in your chosen location (unless of course you are purchasing a humongous block of land!).

So I'll start with our decision making process and this is not from knowing what we were doing or what we were talking about but purely through stumbling through the process and it just happened this way. But hopefully I can give you some information that will better help you through something we seriously fumbled through now that I look back on it!

We weren't 100% set on a location so we visited all of the local estates that had land for sale and concurrently happened to start visiting some display homes while we were there. This is when I first realised that buying land vs house design is a bit of a chicken and the egg dilemma. Land sizes in new estates are not overly big, but house designs are! Don't get me wrong, there are smaller designs, but the whole point of this exercise for us was to have a bigger home and I knew I did not want to build a two storey house right from the outset. After touring some display homes and finding some designs and floor plans that I liked I quickly realised that it is not just a matter of picking a block of land and a house design and building it. We were about to enter a whole new world of length vs width vs contours vs council rules and regulations, retaining walls, etc etc. I initially started picking designs that I liked only to realise I needed an actual block of land to site it on to see if it would 'work'.

We researched, we drove around, we met with sales agents, we gathered piles of paperwork, maps, plans, etc. At the same time, because I'm a person who likes to cross all my I's and dot all my T's we were visiting display homes and asking for ball park figures to build the designs that we liked. And weren't they cagey? They really don't like to ball park, but I insisted I needed to know a rough estimate. There is a great rule of thumb to use with house designs - take the base price of the house and add roughly $100000-$200000 to it to give you a ball park figure of the end cost to build your house. This cost includes site costs, basix, BAL requirements, upgrades, etc (all of which I will cover later). The difference will be in your tastes and requirements and how much you want to 'upgrade' from standard. Be aware that changes to floor plans can be very costly!

Most sales agents in display homes will have information on all the available blocks of land in the estate they are in or if not it is usually available on the sales websites for the estate. Using this they can 'site' your desired house design on your desired block of land and let you know if it will work with council requirements. We did this many times over with a few home builders, but then eventually mostly with our builder of choice.

We then discovered an estate that were not aware of and instantly fell in love. We knew this was where we wanted to be so we searched for the perfect block and found it. The issue was now though that the house design I had set my heart on wasn't going to work with our block of land as the design was too wide for the block to fit with council requirements. We spoke to a few of the sales consultant and played with several house designs to try to get something close. Eventually one sales consultant alerted us to a new house design they had just released that was similar to what we were after. We were able to change a few things around and end up with almost exactly what we were after. Our block of land and chosen house design are below.

So what is the answer to land vs house design? It really depends on what you are after. If location is your biggest requirement then go with that but be prepared to possibly compromise on house design. If the design of the house is more important then try to find a block of land that fits with your house design. For us we found where we wanted to be and were able to tweak a design to be pretty much exactly what we were after. So my advise? Do both at the same time if you can. Since starting our journey I have seen many people buying land and then being thoroughly disappointed when they can't build their dream design or the costs blow out astronomically because they didn't do their homework. Of course you can never fully know all of the costs or unknown issues that may arise but I guess knowing as much as you can now will save a lot of stress and anxiety in the long run! Happy house design and land hunting!