In this video, Colin Fragar, our founder and CEO, shares advice from his personal experience developing granny flats.
Click on the “Play” button below to watch now:
Or for those that prefer to read, here is a transcript of the video…
Okay, what you need to know before you get in touch with a granny flat builder. My name is Colin Fragar from Council Approval Group. Now I’m drawing on not only our experience in doing thousands of these approvals for people for getting a granny flat, but also having done them personally for myself.
This may be your first granny flat that you’ve done or it may even be your second one. But I just want to be able to leverage our experience and to be able to help you as you’re making decisions. It’s a very important decision that you’re making because a granny flat certainly does maximize your rental return of a property, but also may provide extra space that you might need for a family member depending on what you’re doing it for.
The Challenge with a Granny Flat Builder
I was wondering if I can ask you permission on this just to be able to, to speak frankly about hiring a granny flat builder. One of the challenges that I see people make in hiring a granny flat builder is that they get them to do the council approval process as well. The challenge with that is if you contract with them to do the designs, do the approval process, and to build, you’ve locked yourself into one single builder and doesn’t mean you’re going to get the best possible builder or the best possible price.Instead, what I recommend is that you get your own council approval. So what that allows is, if you get your own council approval, for you to do your own plans through people like the Council Approval Group. And allows you to be able to then tender out the project to builders. And if you can tender out the project, that means that you will eventually get a lower cost of construction.
Maximise Rental Return
I’d like to show you just a few photos here just before we finish and to some other tips about granny flat builders. What seems to be on the internet these days is a lot of very cheap plans. And cheap plans and cheap construction usually means cheap end quality and lower end rental return.You’re looking for the maximum return on investment here. You’re not looking for the lowest cost of construction necessarily.If you get trapped into building something that looks like a prefabricated shed, people are going to know. Renters do not want to necessarily downgrade. They want to downsize or they want to be in a premium product. Yes it’s small but they feel proud of it. And my experience has been that if you put in those premium fixtures, if you go to a little bit of extra effort, like extra natural light coming in these properties, that you will end up maximizing your return on investment.
Get More Information
My name is Colin Fragar. I hope you found these tips helpful. If you haven’t already, please grab Your Ultimate Guide To Council Approval. It’s full of tips and tricks on granny flat builders, hiring processes and things like that particularly to do with granny flats themselves. It also shares some of the experiences that our clients have had.Also if you do have a project and you would like to talk more about getting council approval for granny flat, please book in to speak to one of our team.
My name is Colin Fragar from the Council Approval Group. Thanks for joining us.