Question 1

What is the cost to build a custom house?

Accepted Answer

Typically 25% -100% more than the equivalent house provided by a Volume Home Builder. (Unless you'll be an Owner Builder)

However, most custom houses are not 'equivalent' so it depends greatly on the design, specifications, scale, and its location accommodating for site specific conditions

BYO Floor Plan’s service is designed to help you identify the potential cost of your custom home ASAP and at various points throughout the preconstruction process. This will help give you piece of mind and avoid wasting time designing something that isn’t feasible.

Our flagship service delivers three comparable quotes from licensed builders based on the plans and specifications we have collectively agreed upon and then prepared.

We have various blog posts and other FAQ below that discuss factors relating to the costs associated with building a custom home and how you can save money.

Relevant Blog posts: 
 • What Does a Custom House Cost to build? (https://www.byofloorplan.com.au/post/what-does-a-custom-house-cost-to-build)
 • Why are architecturally designed houses more expensive? (https://www.byofloorplan.com.au/post/why-is-more-expensive-to-build-an-architecturally-designed-home)

Please note, that if you have a specialist consultants for the design of interiors, lighting, landscaping etc, we cannot really control the cost of your build as our influence on the overall construction cost would become diluted. If this is your plan and budget is a key concern, we recommend you engage a single builder or quantity surveyor early on who can continually run cost estimates as various designs and specifications proposed and developed.

Question 2

How can the design save or cost money when building a custom home?

Accepted Answer

It is easy to design a house that is too expensive, which can be a real trap - just like it's easy to take too many things on camping trip.

Research, Preparation, Flexibility,  and utilising free resources are some key principals for saving money on your custom build too.

With this in mind, key areas to save money on a new build include: (excluding interior design)

1. Working with the topography of the land
2. Having an efficient floor plan that is of an appropriate size 
3. Avoiding extra storeys, roof terraces, pavilions or additional wings of the main building
4. Using readily available materials/products
5. Using conventional building methods/systems, 
6. Minimising custom made elements
7. Avoiding materials with a labour intensive  installation
8. Simplify the building's geometry
9. Understand the major costs outside of the house - Eg Pool, Retaining walls and landscaping allowance
10. Forgetting artisan products made in Byron Bay!

Relevant Blog posts: 
 • What Does a Custom House Cost to build? (https://www.byofloorplan.com.au/post/what-does-a-custom-house-cost-to-build)
 • Why are architecturally designed houses more expensive? (https://www.byofloorplan.com.au/post/why-is-more-expensive-to-build-an-architecturally-designed-home)

While every project's budget varies, one consistent aspect is 'construction labour' in Australia is not cheap. Unlike other parts of the world where some construction workers are illegal immigrants paid cash by their bosses, if your working with a respectable builder you can expect their subcontractors to be more legitimate, use the right tools and procedures, therefore being priced accordingly.

Save yourself money in the build with a considered and well documented design.

Question 3

What is the cost of hiring BYO Floor Plan?

Accepted Answer

Our Building Design Service Page, outlines our services, which are provided in distinct stages, each with their own fees.

This pricing model information is a guide only and be confirmed by booking a Design Brief consultation with us. All our clients are provided with a tailored fee proposal with various pricing packages to ensure you’re only paying for what’s relevant to you.

Regardless of the services you hire us for, all service stages are paid across multiple invoices to help stager the preconstruction costs.

Question 4

Why can’t BYO Floor Plan just draw construction plans from the start?

Accepted Answer

The short answer is: We could, but you would actually end up paying more in fees and it would take longer.

With the design of any complex system you need to prototype design options and refine a design through various iterations or tests, otherwise the run the risk that the first iteration has minor or major flaws that can’t easily be fixed.

A set of our drawings for construction typically includes 20-40 pages of detailed information. If we just started at that and you decided to shift one room, we’d need to update basically every page because the effects would snowball throughout all the types of drawings. It’s also quite time consuming to prepare the working drawings, so you’d need to wait a longer time period to see your design brief presented for the first time and there is almost a zero percent chance you would want to stick with the first iteration.

A final factor is you don’t want to give council drawings that include everything as that can confuse council  officers who are less experienced with reading detailed plans and if they want to change the floor plan, the cost implications to redo it could be astronomical thanks to sheer amount of content that needs to be redone. Also you typically want as much freedom for wiggle room after your approval as possible so you don’t need to wait send drawings back to council because you want to change something minor like the width of a window.

Question 5

What is BYO Floor Plan’s role during construction?

Accepted Answer

After designing your house we will naturally know it inside out better than anybody else. For that reason some clients hire us for the optional ‘Services During Construction’ stage to keep us at their side.

To read more about this service stage click here

Our assistance during this state is not required by law, so you are welcome to trust the builder to pick up and correct potential construction mistakes or oversights and answer any technical queries you have throughout the build.

We can sometimes be booked up for weeks or months at a time so by engaging us for this service, you know that we can make your construction enquiries/design changes a high priority.

Design Review | Façades | Drawings for Council & Builders

FAQ

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