Tizzy's duplex development

I can't believe how fast our brickies worked considering the amount of days lost due to heavy rain. We now have all brickwork done and they've started the two houses over the road.

We have steel roof trusses on one and a second delivery has arrived for the St Louis house so that steel goes up this week. I would truly hate that job its so noisy! Phil is keeping his fingers crossed that he doesn't have to go up in the roof space for any reason. Not as easy to crawl through as wooden joists and beams.

WE finally got individual titles on each block this week. Unbelievably slow process and I'm not sure I'd bother subdividing again. I think we could have done just as well buying single blocks and building two completely separate residences. I won't really know until the actual build finish date.

Thing is we settled on the block in May 2006, then the application for green titles went in about early July 2006. Months later, we then reverted to a strata application when the green was provisionally approved and the shire put out their hand for an extra $25K which we weren't expecting!! So then right back to the beginning of the process and applied for strata titles and here we are August 2007. Was it worth it?? Not sure yet, because there's been a fair whack for holding costs to factor in because of the delay in starting the building. You can't start a build while a green title application is in process but you can start with a strata application, so we didn't start for months.

Well Here are the latest photos.

http://www.somersoft.com/forums/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=520

It's all fairly speedy right now but I understand there will be some delays with the finishing trades.
 
Looks really good Tizzy! great work.

I recall your slab going down earlier than mine but ours is at lock up stage now, being tiled and should be ready in 3 weeks. Well, probably coz there hasn't been any rain here so no delays really.
 
oh I thought your slab went down longer than that. It's about 10 weeks ago that our slab went down. About 3 to 4 weeks until handover.
 
Hi Trizzy

I have just finished my duplex and understand your excitement. Something to keep an eye on.... Once you reach practical completion and have paid all progress payments apart from the final 10k or so WATCH THE TIMING OF THE FINISHING BITS. The builders have the majority of their $ and they start asking the tradies to return and repair or touch up their work. Most tradies don't give this area much of a priority. Keep on top of the builder and make sure they work to the time lines that they tell you.

My builder took 11 weeks to reach practical completion (he had all but 8k) and then 6 weeks to do the hand over. I was very disappointed and frustrating.
Wayne
 
Thanks Wayne we'll try to keep on top of it. I've heard the last bit is the hardest.

I checked the site today because the builder wants the next $70K for reaching "plate height". Builders are further along than plate though. Roof frames are up and today we saw that gas lines are in on Vermont house and and the electric cables are set. St Louis only has the walls chased at this stage. I wanted to take photos but left the camera memory card in the laptop!! Don't you hate that :rolleyes:

Something we realised today is that the 10 metres or so dividing fence between the two houses will look cheap and nasty if we use standard height colourbond fencing. So I'll go and talk to the brickies next week and see how much they will charge me to build an extra wall dividing the properties about 8 feet high. Then it can be rendered to match each house and will give more of a court yard feel.
 
Well today was an amazing Fathers Day spent at beautiful Mindarie boat harbour at the Indie Bewhaus boutique brewery. Nice place, good band, good food, good company.

On the way back we stopped in on the Hocking build and saw that the roof tiles are up!! Well, on one house they are all laid out they are half laid out on the second place. This time I remembered my camera.

http://www.somersoft.com/forums/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=520

I'm pleased with the colour choices. Vermont has Oakwood cement tiles (much cheaper than clay) and St Louis has Charcoal. They look good. I'd say the cement ridge caps will get finished this week.

Inside it looks like the electricians and the plumber have been busy. All the wiring seems to be in and the copper pipes placed.

Last week we had a brain wave and decided that both properties would look better if we used a tallish wall as the boundary fence between the rear yards rather than colourbond metal fencing.

Well the quote came in for the 6 metre, 26 course wall (in fast brick) at $5000!! So, it won't be happening, not at that price. A colourbond fence with the matching fence topper will have to do.
 
I come back from a few weeks holiday in Thailand and find that nothing at all has happened on the site!!! Well maybe a couple more wires hanging out of walls, but thats it!!! :confused: Will have to call the builder tomorrow to find out what he's waiting for.
 
Called the builder, (well the supervisors assistant really), and was advised that due to the excessive rain, bricks are taking a while to dry out therefore plastering has been delayed. It is expected that plastering will begin towards the end of the week. By that stage, the electrician should have embedded all his wires.
I think by plastering they mean rendering the outside, but I'm not sure. They might just mean the internal walls. Expected finish is still December, though goodness knows how!!
 
Usually the same team will do the render outside as well as the plastering inside.
The internal gets a grey cement based first coat before the white plaster top coat anyway.
Would be really interested to find out the total time it took to complete and handover the the whole building.
 
No problems kph I'll let you know. Well I know now that lock up is meant to be late November and handover in mid January.Site and internally has now been cleaned up ready for plaster. They also billed me for roof cover this week.
So my original thought of having a tenant for Christmas is way off.

We also had the floor tiler (the tiling for the main rooms) booked for mid October but that was way too hopeful. We've put him off until mid January.
This weekend we'll meet a couple of stonemasons and get the quotes for the retaining walls on the boundaries. Needs to be limestone to look any good.

They say though that hand over takes twelve weeks from lockup!!It used to take 6 weeks.
 
The houses need retaining walls around their front gardens. There is a drop from proposed paving level to the kerb of 1.2 metres. Too much just to slope a garden. I need a compacted flat paved area to get as much usable ground as possible. This is going to cost a bit more than we bargained for, mainly because the shire expects retaining walls that are 3 blocks high above ground to be ridiculously over engineered (they go back two blocks). Now I need to draw the plans, apply for a permit, get approvals from both neighbours and keep my fingers crossed the council doesn't expect an engineers report. Might be post Christmas before these walls can go in. I hope not.

To top it off, the water metre at one house is at kerb height not at slab level and its in the way of the new retaining walls.
....And! the survey pegs are all gone, courtesy of the bob cat driver who was a bit keen clearing the rubble.
 
My houses have render!!

Still waiting for the water metre to be raised, but on the plus side, apparently I have render!!! Inside and out and ceilings!!!
Haven't seen it yet so I'll drive over tomorrow and get some photos. :)


This means we need to decide very fast which way to go with the soakwells, because the downpipes will be going in this week I should think.

With the storm water, the options were to use 600ml concrete soaks (5 together) across the front in limited space and bring pipes to them, and that work we could do ourselves. Or, get the huge soaks put in under the paving and lead the pipes to those. If we go with the smaller soaks we need nine per house.

The quote for the installed 1500 ml soakwells was quite good I thought. The tradie left me a quote for $1400 cash per house , but as I need to be able to claim I've asked for a phone back with another quote.
 
Well these are some photos I took today. I'm happy with the render because it has made the houses look much better.

http://www.somersoft.com/forums/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2846&cat=520

We've decided to go ahead and do the soakwells ourselves. It saves $2000 so worth the effort and should take us most of next weekend while the builders aren't on site. We intend to use 90ml pipe underground, assorted T piece joiners and elbows and angle bits, heaps of blue goo and we've got 9 soakwells to do for each house. Glad we are digging in sand. We debated whether to use the concrete soaks or not but decided to try the beehive style plastic ones which are encased in a "sock". It's supposed to stop the sand seeping in. Not too worried about not using concrete because they won't be going in on trafficable ground. Can't say we got much help at Bunnings, but we found everything we needed anyway and downloaded some "how to" sheets off the internet.
 
Hello tizzy

The render is looking good.

I don't pity the soakwell installation. Thats a lotta holes to dig. I had to google soakwell. Hire a dingo or bobcat with auger attachments. Might make it easier.

Cya
Aaron
 
Hi Tizzy

Hope you dont mind me asking, what are you thoughts of doing a duplex/triplex subdivision in Perth at the moment?
In a lot of areas the market seems to have stalled, although rents still seem to be going pretty well.
Would you have changed your timing in hindsight?

I only ask because I am trying to work out what my next move in the property game should be and am interested in hearing what other local people are doing etc.
Thanks very much!
 
I can only comment on this area, but I'd consider starting another duplex development project if I had acquired the land at a good price and intended to rent out the finished products.

In terms of building to sell, I'd like to see how some of the current stock of houses in the suburb sell on the market before deciding whether there is enough of a profit margin to consider going again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

H
Duplex development - Does this look right?
2
Replies
32
Views
4K
Hodge
H
S
WA - West Leederville 6007, 3 unit development
2 3
Replies
53
Views
11K
boeman
B
D
IP in Kelmscott, Perth - subdivide and sell lands or subdivide and build?
Replies
7
Views
2K
MTR
MTR
A
Owner buider construction loan for duplex
Replies
11
Views
2K
Shahin_Afarin
Shahin_Afarin
S
Green Title / Freehold Subdivision - Perth
Replies
17
Views
4K
perthguy
P
Back
Top