1 step forward 2 steps back. Currently our design is still with council but a lot has happened in the back ground in the last month or so. The outfit who designed our house plans were also to build it – after the complications of our first design dealing with architect/builder/engineer we were keen for a ‘one stop shop’. However the outfit have essentially ceased new business and their build arm decided around Christmas that they would not be available for our build.
This leaves us in the position of having a design with no one to build it, precisely what we were looking to avoid by going with design/build. We had shown our design to a builder after a friend suggested them as a backup option/ price comparison. Their pricing estimate came in at 50% over budget. Part of this is to relative new/unique product being used in the design specifications which many builders will not have experience with. They need to err on the side of caution so they will typically build in cost for this.
So at this point we are considering 2 options. I have another friend who works as a QS for a building company he is pretty confident they can build it for around 25% over budget (this is currently the line in the sand mark for us ). It will take 4-6 weeks for a proper price estimate and we can go from there. The risk is it if it goes over our limit we then have to ‘value engineer’ . Again issues we thought we could avoid by the design/build route we took.
The second option is going to one of the other design/build outfits I’ve spoken to and adapt our current plans to their system/products. I’ve contacted a company and we are waiting for their Christchurch representative to get back from leave.
Mike Columbus is a founder of sortmymortgage.co.nz and director of New Zealand Home Loans Christchurch Central. Mike can be contacted on 03 335 3527 or 021 369908. This advice is of a general nature only and before acting on it please read my disclaimer which can be obtained by emailing me at mike.columbus@nzhomeloans.co.nz
After having a couple of significant changes to circumstances and ending up with a prohibitively expensive design we have chosen to not go ahead with our previous design and are now moving onto design 3. With our previous design we had ended up going down a path of using some pretty specialized products that most builders were not familiar with. The one builder who was used to the product was not available and when we had it priced by others in came in between 37% and 55% over budget. So we chose to walk away at that point.
Having a couple of builders price the build did give us some clarity about some of the costs. Effectively there are some fixed costs with a build and then variable depending on the size etc. So foundation costs, plumbing, power etc are not going to change much if the house is another 30sqm bigger. Previously we had thought to build in two stages, what we need now and what we want in the future. As we have identified we are only really taking about another room and bathroom we are now considering a bigger house as a single stage build opposed to the previous designs which were looking at a couple of stages.
So we have met our next potential designer/builder and added to our previous brief of a further room plus bathroom. We have also asked them to look at an off-the-grid option as the cost of this seems to be quite justifiable at the moment.
Design wise we have our previous design which we really like and can potential fall back to that (with some modifications) but as we are with someone new we will take advantage of their skills and see if they can impress us with something different.
Mike Columbus is an founder of sortmymortgage.co.nz and can be contacted on 03 335 3527 or 021 369908.
This advice is of a general nature only and before acting on it please read my disclaimer which can be obtained by emailing me info@sortmymortgage.co.nz