Small 4 x unit development cost

I'm keen to lean more about small unit developments. Does anyone have experience in this and care to share there thoughts and even what it ended up costing you to develop 4 units? Would you do it again?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts, and cost (especially for the Toowoomba area)? What sort of profits did you walk away with?
 
Hi Andrew

In toowoomba, a mirror image project house unit (2 in total) may be a viable solution to start with

You can build a 2x 3bed unit (looks like a house) for $299K to a fair standard in Brisbane.

Infrastructure charges will hurt, $26k ish in Toowoomba from memory. But they are a very straight forward build.

You can go straight into a 4 unit one, but commercial finance may kick in as opposed to resi.

I would allow at least $50k to get it off the ground (including the infrastructure charge) could be more depending on what you do.

Good luck.

regards
 
The townhouses I am building in NSW cost me $215K including GST. The total size of the townhouse is 135m2 (3 bedroom, 2 bathroom , 1 extra toilet) including a 25 m2 garage so it works out as $1600/m2.

People sometimes love to use cost/m2 to work out the total cost, but the reality is the cost per m2 becomes lower when you build a bigger unit. In other words, if you build a 180m2 townhouse, it might not cost you as much as 180 * $1600 = $288K. Instead $265K to $270 is what is going to cost you which works out as $1500/m2.

This $100/m2 difference in building cost calculation can kill the feasibility study if the margin is tight.

RPI, one of my builder friends told me the construction cost in Brisbane is noticeably higher than Sydney. How much would it cost to build a 135m2 townhouse I am currently building in NSW? I am talking about standard project home type finish, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom , 1 extra toilet with tile downstairs, carpet upstairs?
 
I'm keen to lean more about small unit developments. Does anyone have experience in this and care to share there thoughts and even what it ended up costing you to develop 4 units? Would you do it again?

I'm interested to hear your thoughts, and cost (especially for the Toowoomba area)? What sort of profits did you walk away with?

How long is a piece of string? How big are the units do you want in terms of internal BUA? $1,500 per sqm sounds like a reasonable starting point.
 
Hi, apologies as I don't mean to hijack thread - I just had one question in regards to looking at small unit developments. Does anyone who is experienced have a rough guide as to the minimum width (frontage) of a rectangular block of land to do a development? I know with developments, usually 4-5m of width needs to be the driveway on one side accessing front and rear units, but what is too small? Is a 12m wide block too small? 15m wide block too small? Thanks for anyone's responses :) ps. i realise it also depends on the depth of the block too, but in this case lets just say depth is no issue.

Sorry again as this doesn't have much relevance to OP, just thought I'd ask on a development thread :)
 
The answer to your question relates to the design of the units. You would need a driveway of at least 5m wide for more than one unit at the back while also allowing for turning circles of cars. So 12m is certainly possible but it would obviously impact the design of the houses you can build on it.
 
Is a 12m wide block too small? 15m wide block too small? Thanks for anyone's responses :)

In my opinion for QLD I would use 15m as a rough idea to the minimum width if your looking at duplex/small unit development. Anything smaller than this and you are likely going to have a good battle on your hands with planning. The higher the density they may let you get away with 12m or so.

New BCC city plan allowing 7.5m 300m2 subdivisions in brisbane though.
 
I have done some at 13m, but the design and planning have to be just right, as this is where the impact really comes into impact assessable.

The skinny long blocks lend themselves to the down one side of the block rather than driveway up the middle type developments.
 
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