Site Costs article in New Home Buyer

Site costs are the costs you’ll pay to the builder which are specifically dependant on your site’s features. They’re mostly additional to the base price builders present on their price lists. Site costs range from obvious essentials like connections between the house to water, sewer and electricity utilities, to compliance with federal, state and local government legislation, to fees to cover access to a difficult block. The only site costs worth basing any opinion on are those written down by a builder in an official quotation (also referred to as a tender).

Site costs aren’t included in the listed price of the home because there’s so much variance. No matter how close, no two blocks are ever exactly the same. For example, one Sydney builder can cite a case of two different clients building the same home design in the same northern suburbs street. One client ended up paying over twenty thousand dollars more than their neighbours – all due to different site costs. Block one was reasonably flat, on the high side of the road with a slight slope towards the street. Block two was across the street, on the lower side of the road with significant slope to the rear fence. To counteract this slope, block two’s owners had to pay for the home to be lifted almost one metre out of the ground at the rear of the property, and then had to install a set of steps from the back door to access their backyard. Additionally, the slope meant that stormwater naturally ran through block 2 into the properties further down slope and downstream. To stem this flow, and as a condition of approving the new dwelling on the block, council insisted on the installation of a stormwater detention system.

Many different factors will affect the site costs your land attracts. As illustrated in the above example, slope may play a big factor. This is one reason why some builders now insist on being supplied with a contour survey before they’ll tender on a block of land. Other builders are willing to create tenders based on a site plan clearly showing the dimensions, orientation and location of services on the block. All tenders should be based on a site inspection, where the builder sees the block, the surrounding neighbourhood, and experiences how the block will have to be accessed.

The ongoing theme of this article will be information – the more you can give the builders tendering on the construction of your new home, the more accurate those tenders will be.

Builders can only determine site costs based on the information and access the clients give them to the land. As the landowner, you should gather as much information as possible about your land. There are many different sources of information available about any registered block of land in NSW, ranging from official legal documents like 88B instruments and Section 149 certificates to anecdotal gossip shared over your fence. In fact, the NSW Office of Fair Trading advises consumers to, “Check with your neighbours to see if they have experienced any unforeseen problems during building or renovation. If a neighbour had problems with rock under the surface, then you might too.”

The following pages aim to prepare you for some of the more standard site costs you’ll find on your tender, and give you an idea of some of the statutory requirements you’ll have to comply with.