What I Learnt When Buying Land

The second part to my previous post which dealt with land vs house design - this one is what I learnt in the process of buying land. So location is obviously the easy one, you buy where you want to live. But there is a whole lot more to buying a parcel of land than I had ever thought about before actually being in the process of doing it!

The easy one is size and can you fit the house design you are really after. Can you fit a single story comfortably or will you have to consider a two story to fit? So you are after the length vs width of the land. Simple right? Not really. What I learnt was that despite looking at land that was at least 600 square metres (which was what we were after), land comes in all different shapes. Initially we looked at just the size and then realised that a really wide frontage then usually meant a short depth, and therefore no good for our long single story house design. We looked at corner blocks to cut down on the amount of neighbours we had only to discover that despite being quite large we would have to sit our house at odd angles or choose another design to make it fit and rather than a backyard we would mostly end up with side yard. Essentially for our chosen house design we needed a lovely rectangle. Luckily the block of land we fell in love with fit this bill being 18.5m wide by 35m long. But the initial house design that I wanted to build would not fit because it was too wide to fit in with council regulations.

This is the next thing you need to know - what are your council's regulations? What set back is required (how close your house can start from the street), what distance is required along your boundary between the wall of the house and your fence)? Our initial chosen design didn't fit because it was too wide to fit in with our boundary distance regulations. Most builder's sales consults should know this information so you don't have to actually source it yourself. They can site your design and tell you if it will 'fit' on your chosen block of land.

The next thing we discovered was contours. You might think you are looking at a relatively flat block of land, but in fact it could have slope that you are not aware of. Our block had a metre of slope over the build site, which is not overly much but it did then mean we needed to factor in retaining walls. Just as an aside, even if you buy a relatively 'flat' block of land or a block of land that has already been 'benched' (retained by the developer) does not mean you will not require retaining! It depends on how your builder cuts and fills your build site. I have a friend who had a 'flat' block of land and ended up needing extensive retaining because her builder 'filled' the block to even it rather than cutting and filling it to even it. My advise? Always have a contingency for retaining walls because chances are you may need something somewhere and they are not cheap! So how do you know the slope of the land you are looking at? Most sales website for new estates will have this sort of information available on their website. This is our contour survey for our block available from the estate website:

So how do you read it? Each line represents 1m of slope, so as you can see from the front corner of our block to the back we have 1 m of slope. If you were looking at another lot plan with say 6 lines, then that's 6m of slope. Be aware that the more sloped the land, the higher the site costs and the higher the cost of the build. It doesn't really take much slope for split levels or dropped edged beams to be required. And the more slope you have the more retaining walls you will end up needing and the higher the cost of your landscaping.

The other thing you want to know about is the aspect of your land or which direction it is facing. Ours is slightly north-west facing. A lot of sales agents will tell you that a 'north facing backyard' in Australia is ideal. Great in theory but not so easy to find the perfect block with the perfect size, slope and aspect. We loved the leafy outlook from our block (we have a public reserve on one side and bush across the road) which was our ultimate deciding factor. Despite not being ideally positioned the sun moves from one side of the house to the other and the backyard is nice and sunny so we decided we could live with that!

Other things to be aware of - is the land in a bushfire zone? If so expect to add some cost to your house build for bushfire requirements. BAL (Bushfire Attack Level) ratings range from Low, 12.5, 19, 29, 40 then FZ. Ours is 29 which added just over $7000 to the build (be aware that this cost varies by builder). Are you likely to hit rock? We had sandstone only 200mm below the surface of our block so that added another $5000 to the build as a contingency 'in case' they hit rock - we did get this back but we had to submit to the bank with this cost included which increased the cost of the build and what we were borrowing. Do you need acoustic upgrades - are you near a main road, on a train line, etc? - this again will add to the cost of the build. Depending on where you buy land you may need upgrades for BASIX requirements (Building Sustainability Index) to ensure your build is compliant, again at added cost. There may also be site clearing costs - cutting down trees, removing vegetation or mulch, etc. Research, ask questions, find out everything you need to know because the costs can add up significantly!