Taking on a building project can be an exciting yet daunting endeavour. Whether you’re considering constructing your dream home, undertaking a knock-down rebuild, or considering a lift and build under or upper storey extension, understanding where to start and what steps to take is crucial for success. This guide will walk you through the essential stages and considerations of a building project.
1. Define Your Vision and Goals
The first step in any building project is to clearly outline your vision and goals. What are you hoping to achieve? Consider the purpose of the project, your budget, and your ideal timeline. Creating a detailed plan will serve as your roadmap and help keep you focused throughout the process.
- Identify your needs and wants.
- Determine your budget and funding sources.
- Establish a realistic timeline.
2. Understand your Borrowing Capacity
The most crucial thing to be done before you can start anything is to speak with a lender to determine your borrowing capacity. Unless you have a strong long-term relationship with your bank, we strongly recommend you source a reliable finance broker to arrange your funding requirements. Finance brokers understand banking and they know how to create an application that will be successful for obtaining your funding requirements. They will also be able to suggest the best deal to suit your individual needs. They will be able to do an assessment of your situation and determine your exact borrowing capacity. They will also arrange to get your finance pre-approval in place.
A pre-approval means you have been accepted by a lender to borrow a certain amount of money for an undisclosed project. In the case of construction of a new dwelling, you may need to have 2 separate facilities initially. The first to acquire the land and the second for construction. Once the construction phase of the project is finished, the loan will then be consolidated and converted into a single housing loan, depending on how you want it structured.
Once you have acquired the land and you have a formal building fee proposal and a signed building contract in place (subject to finance), you then submit this to your lender, and they will provide a formal “Unconditional Finance Offer”.
3. Paying Your Share
It’s important that you understand your bank will require you make your financial contribution to the project before they will provide funding. In many cases a bank will advance funding for 80% of the project costs. That means that you will need to fund the other 20% yourself and these funds must come from savings, they cannot also be borrowed. This varies so discuss with your finance broker for more details. It is imperative that you do not put yourself in a position whereby you need to spend ALL of your savings. You need to make sure you maintain sufficient cash reserves to fund your living expenses until your project is completed.
An important note on Knock-Down rebuilds. When undertaking a knock-down rebuild project, your bank may require you to contribute additional funds. This is because once you knock the existing house down, you have effectively reduced the value of the property to “land only” value and the banks equity will have been depleted. Depending on how your finance is structured, your lender may require you contribute additional funds t ensure the banks equity is maintained during the development phase. It is vital you discuss this with your finance broker when making application for finance.
4. Engaging Easyway Building Brokers
Once you have secured you land and the appropriate construction funding, it’s now time to engage Easyway Building Brokers. In a building project, there are many 3rd party companies that are needed. Depending on the scope of your project, we will need to hire building designers, contractors, engineers, and other specialists. These may include some or all of the following:
- A building designer for building design works and to create detailed working drawings for the project.
- Soil testing and geotechnical reporting.
- Surveyor for contour and identification survey work.
- Structural engineers for footings, slab designs and general computations.
- Town Planners (if required)
- A Private Building Certifier to provide all necessary building approvals
- An Interior Designer to assist you selecting and documenting all of you required fixtures, fittings, colours etc.
- A Builder to undertake the on-site construction works
Depending on your individual project may also require more specialised documentation such as
- Bushfire reports
- Acoustic reports
- Hydraulic reports
- Siting variations
- Material Change of Use
Engaging Easyway Building Brokers requires signing a “Preliminary Works Agreement” and paying the engagement fee. Your engagement fee is calculated on the immediate out of pocket expenses we need to spend for things such as designers, soil tests, surveyors etc. We will discuss this in detail with you during your free consultation.
Once you have engaged Easyway Building Brokers, we are engaged as your building consultants and we will handle everything that is needed for your project from planning and design, right through to final hand-over.
5. Creating the Design of Your Dream Home
Once you have engaged Easyway Building Brokers, the first thing you will need to do is to attend your design briefing meeting. In this meeting, you will discuss with your building designer, everything you want in your new dream home. This is where you explain exactly what you want, and your designer’s job is to take your ideas and put them onto paper in a concept design.
Your building designer will create an initial draft based off the information you have provided and considering your block of land, its orientation and any challenges or obstacles that exist.
You now get to make changes to the design as you desire, and the Building Designer will make the changes to concept plans. It is imperative that the project does not advance past this stage until you are 100% satisfied with your final concept design.
Before attending your design brief meeting, it’s a good idea to discuss with everyone involved, exactly what you want to build. It’s not uncommon for partners to want different things and have completely different expectations. By having a detailed discussion amongst yourselves, you can ensure that you are all on the same page before moving forward. It’s a really good idea to prepare yourself 2 lists for your new home
- The first list needs to be your “MUST HAVE” list. This list contains all things that are not negotiable. This will include the obvious things like 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, double car garage, media room etc.
- The second list is a “WANTS LIST”. This list will contain things that you would like to have if your budget allows. These might be things like, a freestanding bathtub in the ensuite, a built in BBQ, or a swimming pool, etc.
6. Your Pre-Costing Analysis.
Once you have completed the design phase, Easyway Building Brokers will then undertake a Pre-costing analysis of your concept design. This step is absolutely paramount because if the result is over budget, the project should not advance. The design will need to be modified or adjusted to ensure the cost is reduced to within your allowable budget.
This step is not undertaken by many architects, and the result is that there are then full working drawings and structural engineering created for a design that can’t be built due to budget constraints. Ultimately, someone has to pay for all this work and it’s always the client that is left out of pocket.
By undertaking the pre-costing analysis, we ensure that this problem will not exist in your project.
7. Your Inclusions Selections
The next phase is to get the final plans, and detailed working drawings prepared. We will also require Structural Engineering and Computations, and we require an Energy Efficiency Report to be prepare at this time.
These things generally take about 2 weeks to complete and during this time, you will meet with our Interior Designer. This is generally the “fun” part, where you get to choose all the colours and textures of the things that go into your house. Items like kitchen benchtop colours, your bathroom tiles, you roof colour and all your appliance, your fixtures and your fittings for example.
Your Interior Designer will walk you though the entire process and then document your selections, so we have a formal Inclusions and Colours Specification Schedule. This document will form part of your building contract documentation.
Depending on the scope of your building project, you will also attend a cabinetry consult to ensure you have the cabinetry design aspects documented. Our cabinetmaker will prepare detailed plans and 3D illustrations of your cabinetry so you can see what the finished cabinetry will look like.
8. Our tendering Process
Once you have engaged Easyway Building Brokers, one of the first things we do is send a “Registration of Interest” out to selected builders our panel of builders. This process informs the builders that we select to apply to tender on the construction of you new home. We only select builders that we know are confident in building your particular type of home, and builders that are capable of an immediate start when the job is ready to go. They are of no use if they cannot start the job for year.
Once we have collated all the necessary documentation, we package everything into a tender pack and send it to the selected builders for pricing. Our process ensures that the builders provide a price that is included in a “Fixed Price Contract”. We do not accept Prime Costs, Provision Sums or allowances in contracts as these things leave it open for builders to create variations during the build that inevitably cost the client more money. Builders make a lot of money out of variations. Project builders are notorious for having lots of allowances for things that the client ultimately pays more money for. Our contracts ensure there are no hidden costs, no secrets and no surprises. Our documentation ensures you fully understand what is included and importantly, what is not.
9. Building Contracts
Once you have approved your fee proposal for your new home, your builder will prepare the fixed price contract for signing. At this time, you will be required to pay the builder a 5% deposit upon signing of the contracts.
You now need to go back to your finance broker and provide them with copies of all the signed contract documentation. They will then approach your lending body and obtain your formal unconditional finance approval.
10. Construction Inspections and Handover
Easyway Building Brokers undertake an inspection of your home at frame stage during the pre-measure for cabinetry. During this inspection, we check that things like walls are straight and there are no bowed timber studs and that all the walls are all plumb and square. As the project nears completion, we also conduct a thorough pre-handover inspection to ensure everything meets our exacting quality standards and therefore your expectations.
We prepare a written report so your builder can address any final touch-ups or corrections before you officially taking possession of the property. You will also: –
- Perform a final walk-through with your builder to make sure all the items in our report have been attended to.
- Create a punch list of any remaining work still outstanding.
- Sign off on completion and take possession of the building.
In some cases, there may still be some insignificant items still required to be attended to after hand over. These things must be detailed in your handover documentation to ensure you builder is committed fixing these remaining items.
11. Handover and Move In
Exciting times, you now officially have possession of your beautiful new home, and you get to move in and enjoy your new living experience.
12. Maintenance and Follow-Up
In accordance with contractual law, your builder must provide you with a 12-month maintenance period. During this time, any significant problems should be sent directly to your builder for immediate remedy, otherwise we suggest you get a note pad and leave it in a kitchen draw and every time you notice something that requires attention, you note it down.
Towards the end of your 12-month maintenance period, your builder should send you a request for information of any necessary maintenance you want done. In the event they do not send this, you should contact your builder WITHIN the 12-month maintenance period and advise them in writing of the things you want fixed.
13. Understand Your Obligations
It’s important that you understand your obligations with your new home. Understanding that things like not building garden beds next to the house that cover weep holes etc and understanding your requirements for ongoing termite inspections etc.
Your builder should provide you with copies of all the inspection and compliance reports as well as all warranty documentation. If at any time you are unsure of something, you can always contact us, and we will follow up on it for you.
Otherwise from here on, it’s happy living and loving your beautiful new custom designed Easyway Building Brokers Home. We now ask you to please leave us a 5 Star review on Google and tell all your family and friends of your wonderful experience with Easyway Building Brokers.
Contact us today and book your Free, No-Obligation Building Consultation
Easy is the only way to build
