My first townhouse development - Central Coast

Hi all,

This is my first post on this awesome forum, but had hundreds of posts under the name 'Glebe' on the Somersoft forums when I was posting there a decade ago.

I'm soon to be getting townhouses built on the Central Coast. The DA is with council - I'm hoping they will approve it in the next 6 weeks or so. Fingers crossed.

Obviously I don't have the Construction Certificate yet so I'm not wishing to engage any builders for quotes but I'm curious about ballpark figures. I want to get a rough idea of how much my build will cost so that I can ensure I'll have the finance capacity to fund it.

For the development itself, I have a 900 sqm of flat land on the Central Coast, with front and rear street access. I'm planning a 3x 3 bedroom/2.5 bathroom/2 garage development. The development is in a great location - it's 50 metres from the beach (can hear the waves) and 100m metres from the shopping strip. If it's ok with everyone I'd rather not say the suburb at the moment but when the build commences I'd love to keep everyone up-to-date on the progress.

The intention is to build townhouses that are at a particular sweet-spot: above average in quality so that we can attract desirable tenants, but not luxury or unnecessarily expensive. We intend renting all three out, so don't foresee a need to create strata title or take GST/selling costs into consideration.

Here are the dimensions:

Townhouse 1
151sqm of conditioned floor, 8sqm of unconditioned floor, 92sqm of gardens and lawn.

Townhouse 2
160sqm of conditioned floor, 16sqm of unconditioned floor, 92sqm of gardens and lawn.

Townhouse 3
147sqm of conditioned floor, 15sqm of unconditioned floor, 92sqm of gardens and lawn.

This is the first time I've gone through this process so what I'm looking at understanding is the ballpark estimate of the cost from Construction Certificate approval through to Operational Certificate and turnkey handover from builder to me to tenants.

So inclusive would be:

* Demolition of old existing house
* Site readiness
* Build
* Landscaping
* Utility connections
* Certifications
* Contingency reserves

I see lots of different measures on how to estimate the development cost but they vary wildly so I'm finding it really hard to estimate the cost. Can anyone help me please?

Thanks,

Astro.

 

Hi Astro
Congratulations on giving it a go.

So I assume you have conducted your own feasibility?

 

Hi MTR,

Thank you

If you mean financial feasibility, yes, I've conducted that myself but am looking to validate it using the inputs from this community regarding the costs. The revenue side of the equation is healthy -strong market and we're in a great location but my knowledge on the cost side of the equation is weaker - our townhouses are somewhat 'oversized' which will impact build cost so I'm looking to firm up my cost estimates.

But if you mean technical feasibility, no. I've engaged architects and town planners to lead the designs and approvals. I couldn't have done this myself, it's not my field of expertise. To date the crew of used have been great - money well spent. No concerns about getting 3 on the block, there's plenty of others in our street.

 

This might help - will become a more useful resource if more people contribute ...

Construction cost / sqm thread

( once you do have some quotes, would be great if you could post some figures )

 

@Shobha Designs

I think it would be good if you introduce yourself in the Intro section of the forum so ppl know who you are and what you offer.

 

Update
We have the DA approved, yay. Now it's a case of the engineering designs and working drawings, then Construction Certificate. Have started putting together a shortlist of builders to obtain quotes from. Ideally commence build May 2018.

 

That's great. Did the DA take much longer than expected? (You were expecting 6 weeks turnaround from December?) Were there any issues?

(I'm a newbie to property development and have a lot to learn)