In this video, Colin Fragar, our founder and CEO, provides some of the common costs in dual occupancy development and advice for planning your dual occupancy property.
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Or for those that prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video…
So if you’re thinking about setting up a dual occupancy and want to know what items to add to your dual occupancy price list, I’m here to offer a few suggestions today.
My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group. I’m excited to share with you a lot of the tips and tricks that we’ve picked up along the way from 50 plus years experience and, probably, thousand plus of these dual occupancies.
Now, if you’re in the early stages of dual occupancy, you’re obviously thinking about what sort of costs am I up for? And what should I be looking at if a builder was to give me a price list?
The Benefits of Being the Developer
Just to take a step back for a moment, before we dive into the price list, I would ask you this question: Why are you going with a dual occupancy project home builder?It’s totally fine, but I just want to make sure that you’re fully aware that you are able to effectively be the developer yourself. You don’t need to buy retail and you don’t need to purchase a completed product from a builder. You can actually do it yourself and buy wholesale. That’s really what we specialise in here at the Council Approval Group.
Regardless of whether you go with a project home builder, or you’ve been able to get your own council approval through us and have the opportunity to tender out to thousands of builders, what would you be looking at in this price list? You could probably break them into three categories.
Three Cost Categories for Dual Occupancy
Site Preparation Costs
The first category would be site preparation costs. In other videos, I have talked about them and I mentioned briefly here. If you are looking to demolish an existing building so you can fit on a dual occupancy, you may be shortchanging yourself there and costing yourself literally around $300,000 to $400,000 to have to replace that dwelling. Where possible, my best advice is to be able to keep the existing dwelling and add in another one whether it’s attached or separate.Council Approval Costs
So you have your site preparation costs that may or may not include demolition, but you could also then have a second category which is your council approval cost. Your soft cost includes your council application fees which council charge plus also you probably have a survey cost and you probably have things like a stormwater engineer, architects, and a town planner pulling those different documents together, as well as then obviously getting it through Council and getting the approval.Once you have your approval in your hands, you’re then ready to start building and you’re probably going to move down to the third category of costs in your price list.
Construction Costs
So your third category of things that you’ll be considering is how much it’s actually going to cost to build. There’s some good cost savings you can have here with careful architectural design. How beautiful your plans are in terms of the ease to construct can make the difference of 10 to 20% of the cost of construction.Just tiny little tweaks here and there can save you a lot of money.I suggest that you don’t try to do this by yourself, but that you do have somebody like us, like the Council Approval Group, by your side to help you to go through that specific price list. If you are signing up with a builder, just be careful if they are asking you to sign up for the cost of the approval as well as cost of construction. You will be bound by them usually in the contract to build with them. If, however, you’ve chosen to get your own Council Approval and go to anybody, be careful also when you are signing up with a builder. Watch out for some of the cost overruns for delays and variations and things like that.
If you want some more details, make sure you grab a copy of Your Ultimate Guide to Achieving Council Approval which you can get your free copy from our website, councilapproval.com.au. Otherwise, it sounds like you’re pretty serious, so if you want to have a discussion and talk to one of our friendly consultants, please book in your free consult and we’ll go through your project, what you’re hoping to achieve and as well work out a clear roadmap for you in moving forward.
My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group and I wish you every success.