Development Decisions

Do we renovate or rebuild?

Our initial plan was to renovate the house, adding ~100sqm (master bedroom and ensuite, study, family room and new kitchen).

To get a builders ‘ballpark quote’ we did the following:

• Found a builder with a good reputation (searched the BSA website, and asked those that have built in our suburb for references)
• Engaged a draftsman to draw up concept plans for the renovation ($1,800)
• Had a Site Survey done ($3,600)

The renovation quote was a massive shock!

We were thinking maybe $3k * 100sqm = $300k. The quote was nowhere near that!

We contacted a few other builders and found all the estimates to be too high to justify a renovation.

With a renovation we would still essentially have 50% of an old house. Demolishing and rebuilding would cost less, allow us to tailor the layout to our needs, result in a greener end product that would cost less to maintain and run.

Hence, the decision to explore the knock down and rebuild option was an easy one in the end.

Finding a Property

We started our serious search for a property in February 2012, made an offer in March, and settled in June 2012. The property is located in Ashgrove, 6km from the CBD. The land is 800sqm and it comes with a 120sqm post-war Californian bungalow/Fisherman’s Cottage style house.

Welcome

Hi, Welcome to our blog! We have created this blog to capture the process of building our new home in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

We are a family of four, a mum, a dad and two daughters.

We arrived in Brisbane in October 2010, coinciding with the catastrophic 2010-2011 Queensland floods that left many Queenslanders homeless and 3/4 of the state declared a disaster zone.

We decided to rent first in order to get a feel for the various suburbs before buying a property.

We did a fair amount of travelling to and from work in our home town of Albany, Auckland, New Zealand. Hence, the first ‘must have’ for our new home was that it needed to be close to the CBD (<8km).

The other ‘must haves’ included:

• Land Size >700sqm
• Family-friendly Suburb
• Good Primary & Secondary Public School Zones
• Close Proximity to Private Schools
• Development Potential (Renovate or Rebuild)
• Good Street, Over Capitalizing should not be a consideration
• Nowhere near any horse stables, equestrian centres, etc
  (long story…involving multiple snakes and an eastern brown snake in our rental property back yard…8km from the CBD?!)