Our 1st Development

Wow you would think the town planner would support double garage... Less cars parking on the street for neighbours. Over time as area has redeveloped people have more cars, especially when kids stay at home longer!
 
Following... Good luck dealing with the planners, ghastly folk.

You Could think about staggering the line of the two garages and try to recess a little further behind the front wall. A little tinkering, appropriate use of colours/materials and photos of similar outcomes in your area should see you on the right track. If you included a clause 55 assessment in your application it might be worth pointing out how Councils suggestion would result in several non-compliances.

Brilliant thanks for the suggestions Nash13. My drafty is on it and took some pics yesterday, I'll chat to him re non-compliance, nice one ;) I also pulled some stats on vehicle ownership in the area to add to the discussion. Bit of a no brainer really that most new homes have a double garage for a reason.

This is why I love Somersoft, thanks to folk like yourself... ghastly? surely not:)
 
well done Thunder.

may i ask if finding your development site difficult? i live in Sydney and to find a profitable site is very difficult as the site is already expensive and require alot of existing capital to start.

Ummm yes, yes and yes! We hit a lot of dead ends before jumping in and won't know if our approach is right until its done.

In our search we got to a point of info overload and stopped, pared things back and set some simple rules about what was acceptable and wasn't. After that we kept asking questions and searching until we found something we could work within our risk parameters. Its different for everyone, you just got to not give up until you're comfortable with the choices before you.
 
Wow you would think the town planner would support double garage... Less cars parking on the street for neighbours. Over time as area has redeveloped people have more cars, especially when kids stay at home longer!

yep bizarre really, most families have more than one car. You'd think I was asking for a landing strip for the Jetsons:p
 
Hi all,

Apologies for the delay in posting. It's taken a little time to get through council but we have officially received a planning permit :D Now I can breath again...

After the first shake of head from council (computer says noooo), I sat with my builder and drafty and we revised our plans with 2 options. Councils main concern was the visual presence on 2 double garages on the streetscape and a straight vertical wall facing the secondary street.

We flipped the floor plan of the corner townhouse so the garages are now separated and have a visual divide with landscaping. We also made our external colour selections and chose the garage door and surrounding render the same colour to minimise the appearance. Along with some articulation of the garage wall and addition of a front fence, I'll admit it looks much more appealing;)

On the secondary street we altered the 1st floor set back and again with flipping, landscaping and fencing have 3 layers of articulation.

I also decided to spend $$ on having some renderings done (see attached) of the design and then met with the TP so she could see we weren't cowbows from out of town and we'd given some serious thought to the streetscape. It worked brilliantly as the next day we were at advertising stage.

I then knocked on the door of our neighbours for a chat to head off any objections. Not one! So happy.

My builder and drafty have been brilliant and they're working hard to keep moving forward. Demo has been completed and check the pics, no wonder the neighbours were happy to see it go!

Next steps:

We're aiming to complete construction plans, internal selections, soil, energy ratings, engineering, contracts etc in 6 weeks :eek: and the builder is targeting end Sept completion. I suspect later by the time we get through subdivision, contract legals, finance yadda yadda but hey, I'm happy to be wrong.

On the end budget front, with all the alterations I still think an end value of $600k each is achievable, but realistically its best case, $575k mid point and $550k worst. With that in mind, I'm working on some wow factor design touch's for the internals, but nothing to break the budget.;) Our demo costs (amazingly) came to $9k, I had budgeted $10k but was thinking asbestos surprises but no! Also our drafty costs so far are under budget and the builder has not charged me squat for all his awesome efforts (so far:rolleyes:).



Question for you all. I'm thinking I should have a quant surveyor look over the contract estimates to keep us honest, yes? Anything else I need to get onto?
 

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well done!!!

with the re-submission to council and the change of plans.

was there any elements within the costing that was blown? for example, the planned finished date has moved? resulting in extra holding interest costs?
 
Great thread! I will be following with interest!

In our search we got to a point of info overload and stopped, pared things back and set some simple rules about what was acceptable and wasn't. After that we kept asking questions and searching until we found something we could work within our risk parameters. Its different for everyone, you just got to not give up until you're comfortable with the choices before you.

I love the idea of paring things back and focusing on key rules. Would anyone care to share what their key rules for selecting development sites are?
 
well done!!!

with the re-submission to council and the change of plans.

was there any elements within the costing that was blown? for example, the planned finished date has moved? resulting in extra holding interest costs?

Yes, our landscaping costs will increase with the addition of boundary fencing and larger trees. Waiting to see how that impacts but suspect it will be minor.

As for the holding costs, I had budgeted a project timeline of 18 months and we're 10 months in (lost 3 months at the start thanks to our 1st drafty:mad:). I had thought we'd be 6 months to BA and I'd forecasted a long construction stage, at the moment that's been the opposite so the bulk of the holding interest was budgeted at construction stage. If my builder can turn it around in 3 months, then we should be ahead. I'm not holding my breath because something will come up.
 
Great thread! I will be following with interest!



I love the idea of paring things back and focusing on key rules. Would anyone care to share what their key rules for selecting development sites are?

Hi Claire90 - budget has to be key. As its our 1st development our limitation was what we could afford to borrow and worked backwards to shortlist locations. From there we eliminated states, suburbs/towns that didn't meet our budget and minimum targets we set for growth and yield (but that's only important if you're going to hold - well except that it tells you if your location has a heartbeat :D) After that we looked at comps and if they didn't achieve the gap we needed to make 20% profit we moved on.

Would love to hear from others....
 
Hi Thunder.
Well done its a big step. One thing that stung us regarding finance that might be helpful for you is to get the builder to price for turnkey.
When we did our little split and 2. The bank said for us to bring in our receipts and they would hand over 80 percent. We did fencing,retaining walls , flooring , driveways, paving , curtains etc for both properties
And then the bank said no. We used up a large portion of our150k cash buffer and it was pretty stressful. If we had used a turnkey builder there wouldn't have been a problem. Hope it helps
Bushy
 
Thanks Bushy, yep working on that now with the builder to wrap it all up in a fixed price contract:).

I'm knee deep in finishings/colour selections as we speak:eek: having fun though. LOL might have to build an extra room at home just to put all our paperwork and samples in :D:D
 
Hi all,

Apologies for the delay in posting. It's taken a little time to get through council but we have officially received a planning permit :D Now I can breath again...

After the first shake of head from council (computer says noooo), I sat with my builder and drafty and we revised our plans with 2 options. Councils main concern was the visual presence on 2 double garages on the streetscape and a straight vertical wall facing the secondary street.

We flipped the floor plan of the corner townhouse so the garages are now separated and have a visual divide with landscaping. We also made our external colour selections and chose the garage door and surrounding render the same colour to minimise the appearance. Along with some articulation of the garage wall and addition of a front fence, I'll admit it looks much more appealing;)

On the secondary street we altered the 1st floor set back and again with flipping, landscaping and fencing have 3 layers of articulation.

I also decided to spend $$ on having some renderings done (see attached) of the design and then met with the TP so she could see we weren't cowbows from out of town and we'd given some serious thought to the streetscape. It worked brilliantly as the next day we were at advertising stage.

I then knocked on the door of our neighbours for a chat to head off any objections. Not one! So happy.

My builder and drafty have been brilliant and they're working hard to keep moving forward. Demo has been completed and check the pics, no wonder the neighbours were happy to see it go!

Next steps:

We're aiming to complete construction plans, internal selections, soil, energy ratings, engineering, contracts etc in 6 weeks :eek: and the builder is targeting end Sept completion. I suspect later by the time we get through subdivision, contract legals, finance yadda yadda but hey, I'm happy to be wrong.

On the end budget front, with all the alterations I still think an end value of $600k each is achievable, but realistically its best case, $575k mid point and $550k worst. With that in mind, I'm working on some wow factor design touch's for the internals, but nothing to break the budget.;) Our demo costs (amazingly) came to $9k, I had budgeted $10k but was thinking asbestos surprises but no! Also our drafty costs so far are under budget and the builder has not charged me squat for all his awesome efforts (so far:rolleyes.



Question for you all. I'm thinking I should have a quant surveyor look over the contract estimates to keep us honest, yes? Anything else I need to get onto?

Hi Thunder,

Good stuff mate, really nice designs.

I'm currently on my 2nd developments and I'm doing side by sides as well. The only thing I would say is that in my opinion you've got next to no chance of being complete by end of Sept if you haven't already started now. Your next stage will likely take longer than 6 weeks and then you have to remember that they'll start in Winter so you're going to lose days there potentially etc. Our slab is being poured on Friday and even then I'm target a completion data hopefully by the end of this year.

Some advise, make sure you or your builder has applied for a PIC Number from your water authority or else you're going to get a shock soon when you complete the next stage and think you can start :)

All the best,

LT
 
The only thing I would say is that in my opinion you've got next to no chance of being complete by end of Sept

I agree. I'll be happy if we finish before Christmas!

Some advise, make sure you or your builder has applied for a PIC Number from your water authority or else you're going to get a shock soon when you complete the next stage and think you can start :)

I spoke to my builder and I was at least happy that he's onto it. His approach is to have the sewer and stormwater excavation and connection done before the building permit submission so they will have the PIC number. Thanks for the advice on that one LT, I learnt something ;)

Good luck with your build:D
 
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I agree. I'll be happy if we finish before Christmas!



I spoke to my builder and I was at least happy that he's onto it. His approach is to have the sewer and stormwater excavation and connection done before the building permit submission so they will have the PIC number. Thanks for the advice on that one LT, I learnt something ;)

Good luck with your build:D

No worries mate, I got burnt with that in my 1st development, lost weeks because of so you live and learn......didn't make the same mistake this time though :)

You sure the builder can do those works without a building permit? Has the Council done their inspections first?

Developments are lots of stress but I love it......good luck with yours too :)
 
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