In this video, Colin Fragar, our founder and CEO, talks about his experiences developing a granny flat.
Click on the “Play” button below to watch now:
Or for those that prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video…
Can a granny flat have a garage or a carport? My name is Colin Fragar, from Council Approval Group. Now this is a question that I have in front of me today. It’s a question that we often get asked and that is can your granny flat have a garage or carport attached or separate to it?
The answer is yes, but with some qualifications. Actually, I want to show you some of the things that I did in a personal project of mine. This is actually my project. I’m kind of proud of it. So I’m going to show you a photograph now. So it’s a kind of cool granny flat, isn’t it? You wouldn’t almost think that’s a granny flat, but it is. And it fits within all the rules. It fits within the backyard. It’s not the best photograph, but over on the right hand side you can see a carport there.
Tips for a Granny Flat with a Garage
Now this is a tip that I have for you. It depends again on the jurisdiction that you’re in, but whether you can have a granny flat with a carport or garage often depends on the order that you do it in. So with this example, what I did was I built the granny flat first and then I used the what they call, this was in the state of New South Wales, exempt and complying provisions to be able to get an exempt carport which didn’t need council approval.If you are looking at doing a garage or a carport for your granny flat… it’s really important to get the right advice.Another tip that I do have for you, if you are looking at doing a garage or a carport for your granny flat, is it’s really important to get the right advice. There have been court cases which have gone all the way to the Supreme Court about a granny flat, which talks about whether the the floor area within an enclosed garage is part of the granny flat square metre allowances. And it’s really important that you don’t make the same mistake that these guys did, because they actually went ahead and they built the granny flat that had an enclosed garage. They thought that the enclosed garage was outside the ambit of the legislation, outside of the, in this case, 60 square metres. But it was found that it was actually within the 60. I’m not saying that that’s a general principle that applies across the board and applies to your property. It depends on the facts of the case, depends on how your architect designs it depends on how your town planner submits the application.
Take the Next Step
So what I highly recommend, if you haven’t already is to grab Your Ultimate Guide To Council Approval. Please grab your copy and we’ll put it in the post. It’s free of charge. And also please claim, if you haven’t already, your free consultation with one of our team so that we can help to better paint a picture for you going forward. We can maybe answer some of the questions that you have, not all of them, in that first consultation. But what we will do is to paint a clear roadmap for you going forward so you can have clarity and certainty moving forward with your granny flat.My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group. Thanks for watching and I wish you every success.