What you pay while you're building your brand new home

Buying land and building a home in NSW follows the following rough schedule and here’s what you can expect to pay as you’re building. (PS we have also formulated a brilliant quick look factsheet you can access from our members only section on the website - just jump into http://www.tworedshoes.com.au/building & click on members only to register for access.)

When you find the block:

Holding deposit to secure the block, either a flat fee – say $1000, or 0.25% of the purchase pric. Once you’ve paid this get the contract over to us and we’ll get full approval in place before you pay anything else.

Balance of the 5% or 10% deposit – and what we call “exchange”, generally 5-10 days after you sign the contract – and not before you have full loan approval!

Builder Initial deposit usually $500: To create initial tender & may also cover a site inspection – fixed price site costs and tender are very important!

Further deposit: Up to $5,000 to have the contract drawn up and professional plans done.

Council fees: Can crop up, DA (development approval) inspection and lodgement fees. These shouldn’t be more than $1,000 in total but can vary from council to council & your builder will have a really good idea of what you’re in for here if they’re building a lot in the area.

Knock down & rebuild: Can incur extra fees – lets talk about this separately, stuff like disconnecting gas mains etc. Just allow maybe an extra $1,000 – $3,000, if you don’t need to spend it – well and good.

Balance of the 5% build deposit when you accept the contract

And then we move over onto the regular progress payment schedule as per the contract.

Once you settle on the land: You’ll start paying interest only repayments for any loan you have for the land.

You’ll also be responsible for any land rates as they come due.

Once you start the build:

You may have to pay for temporary power and water to be connected, in most cases this isn’t a lot and in new estates the builder will probably have it in their tender

Interest on progress payments on the building loan:

Like the land loan you start making ‘interest only’ payments on the outstanding balance as you make each progress payment on the loan – progress payments are invoices the builder sends at each stage of the build – the interest bill grows as the build progresses until you’re all finished.

Article for The western weekender https://issuu.com/weekenderpenrith/docs/property27jan/32