You would also need to consider holding costs for perhaps as long as 12 months during the building process.
Building land and house packages is a walk in the park in Perth, we are spoilt for choice and it really comes down to doing your homework its a numbers game. I know investors in Syd and Brissy who are currently building and it can be a nightmare, not sure why but they seem to get hammered with variations from what I have been told. I can not even get someone to quote a job,
that's right its boom... forgot
I always signed a fixed contract with builder, never had a problem whatsoever. I was helping a guy in Syd last Perth boom he came over at the end of each build and pretty much a dream run, except at this time it took 18 months to build one home due to the demand.
I was using Ventura and Celebrations, very competitive. However, there are cheaper builders you could use and just spec up which is what Sash is doing. There is really nothing difficult about the process, in fact the worst for me was picking the colours etc though there was an interior designer that helps with this, but what I found is you just get better at it and you work out a formula that works.
If interested start looking at land, don't buy land and house packages, buy the land yourself and then select the spec builder, this way you control the process and get the best possible deal.
Work out what the end value is of the selected area and what the actual sales figures are today, this is the only way to determine whether its a goer or not. So if build is $400K and sales figures, comparing apples with apples, same size house/block, similar location is 15-20% more then perhaps its time to consider this area.
I would be search all areas and would target the area that stacks up, greater profit so you can access the equity.
Cheapest block in Wellard, a tad on the small side
http://www.realestate.com.au/property-residential+land-wa-wellard-200771147