Building on a Budget

The in-laws have just returned from a month in Australia and came over to Orme Towers on Sunday armed with, of course, plenty of photos and, interestingly, local newspaper property sections.

It was fascinating to see how the housing market works over there and, in particular, how self-build - or owner-build, as they call it - dominates the way that people end up in houses.

This scanned-in advert below is pretty typical. It shows how 'estates' are divided up into serviced plots with future developments and infrastructure clearly marked. Plots are pretty cheap (they're called homesites). A flick through the same newspaper shows plenty of adverts for builders willing to build homes usually off a standard set of houseplan options.

 What's interesting is that a) prices for 'build costs' and 'plot costs' are quoted very separately (which rather assumes a uniform flat plot) and b) there are usually 'buyer incentives' such as rainwater harvesting, built-in wardrobes and so on offered with the homes themselves. It's effectively a process of personalising a set design.

It is certainly on the edge of what we'd call self-build, although there is the option to really commission individual designs and builders. I'd also suspect that the usual 10-30% uplift in value you normally associate with a UK self-build is in Australia swallowed up by the land developer - the guy bringing the plots to market.

However, it's interesting to see a system where individual choice is at the centre of things rather than a minority affair.