Moving home to a LSB. Building and setup costs???

Hi all... This is my first time posting on LSB but I have been reading up and leaning a lot... Great site!

My wife and I are moving back home to Canterbury from Western Australia at the end of the year and have our hearts set on getting a lifestyle block on the Canterbury Plains. My wife had a farming upbringing and I am keen on gardening so we do have some idea of what it is going to take to run our lifestyle but we are both very new to buying and building property.

We are looking at a bare land block with the plan to get a shell only house built (120m, 3 bed, 1 bath). We have quite a limited budget so I would say we are very money poor, time rich with plans to do as much as we can ourselves to save.

My very rough estimate on the cost has put an expected budget of around $250k on the land (4ha) and I have a quote for approximately $80k for the shell kitset. Other costs will be getting the shell built ($25k), power/phone/water to the house ($25k) and sewage system($25k) for a total of $405K.

I am very weary of getting caught out with un expected costs and we really need to keep the cost down with a max budget of $450k. The more left over the quicker the fences and trees will go in.

Priority will be getting onto the block and getting the house a code of compliance cert with other things like fencing, livestock, landscaping etc. coming later as we can afford them.

I would really like any opinions on our plans, things I have not accounted for, ideas on keeping costs to a minimum, reality! Wanting to talk to other people who have done the lifestyle block on the cheap.

Thanks all,
Hamish

Hi and welcome!

When we built there were unexpected problems with laying the foundations, which meant the footings had to be deeper than usual which added cost. I don't see any site preparations in your costings. You will need access for the builders especially if they have to crane anything in. - Is this included in your "building the shell' costs? Also be very clear before you build as to what you want, and be aware any change to those plans (extra power points, moving a door etc.) will be a variation and charged accordingly.

Good luck!

Planning permits, reserve contribution fees and other various council costs if required
Plumber, electrician, registered builder - you can no longer do many of these things yourselves but require people who are registered with your council
Driveways, access ways
Costs can vary from one part of the country to another and there is no blanket amount you can assume will cover everything, it always costs more

If there are any 4 h blocks that you will be permitted to build on available in Canterbury, I suspect they will be way more expensive than $250K. Before you sign a land purchase agreement, check that building a dwelling is permitted.

Hi and welcome

We looked at house/land properties in Canterbury and it was very expensive.

Even in the Manawatu we looked at building and a 4 acre block was $190,000 +.

Good luck with your move and finding the right place

If you find Canterbury too expensive, you might like yo take a look at the Wairarapa.
Similar climate, great lifestyle possibilities and you can easily buy a 20 acre block of bare land for $180,000-ish.
We love new LSB'ers!
(Photo taken last weekend at Clareville near Carterton.)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

another thing I forgot you need is a Geotech report before building anything, not sure of the cost of these

$25k seems a bit excessive for a septic system on a 120 sq m home with one bathroom.

My friend has one of these ($8500kit) for their family of 3...

www.swwsnz.co.nz/index.php

works well and the have not had an issue in the 3 years they have had it, nor had to empty it...

Uses a normal toilet with low water use, does not smell.

We plan on having one or two of these on our house...

they are in Franz Josef so it is cold there and it is in the shade behind their house.

Just a few comments on the above.
Not all councils will accept this system and approve it so this is something to check with them first.
Having just put in an application for a septic I can tell you that the council would not approve it without having an installer who is registered with them, So in Auckland City at least you could not do it yourself
When it is professionally installed , it also comes with a guarentee for 10 years, you would get no such guarentee with a self installed system so if something goes wrong in the future, you are on your own
And believe me, I have had heard of two systems clogging up in the plant filtration system and its no fun trying to ameliorate the problem. My friend described it as literally up to your arm pits in shit, not something I want to experience.
I had a quote from Colin using this system and it was well above the 10,000$ plus gst, even tho he only lives up the road.
Not included in that quote, is extras for every downpipe from the house as well as a per metre charge for laying the fields.
Remember, if doing it yourself, you need a digger and quite a lot of work needs doing, I am inclined to go with getting it done professionally and going with the guarentee

I think you are talking about a different system. No digger required for that one.

You do need tof be less toxic with chemicals but our friends had a baby and were also not completely chemical free for sanitary reasons. The worms thrive even in winter. I checked it out last September.

It comes with the paperwork for the council.

No, I am talking about that system, because Colin who you can see on that website is the person who came to our site and told us how the whole thing works, gave us the quote etc.
Thew two tanks relating to the septic are partially buried, as are the pipes leading from the tanks to the fields. The pipes leading from the tank have to be 1m below the bottom of the tank
A digger was definitely required on my site.
Perhaps if you are putting it on the side of a hill it could be different.
Suggest you make contact with Colin yourself instead of relying on what I am saying

muri;514230 wrote: No, I am talking about that system, because Colin who you can see on that website is the person who came to our site and told us how the whole thing works, gave us the quote etc.
Thew two tanks relating to the septic are partially buried, as are the pipes leading from the tanks to the fields. The pipes leading from the tank have to be 1m below the bottom of the tank
A digger was definitely required on my site.
Perhaps if you are putting it on the side of a hill it could be different.
Suggest you make contact with Colin yourself instead of relying on what I am saying

Touche...

I know our buddies did it without a digger on flat land. Used a pump to get from the digester to the pant beds that were on a wooden frame...

anyway, no need to hijack the thread anymore but $25k still seems quite excessive for a septic system. They too are not immune from cogging/flooding with shit going everywhere.

Hi Hamish, sounds similar to what we are doing. We looked at land in Canterbury - difficult to find bare land at $250,000 that didn't have either really poor soil, poor situation or too hilly etc. unless of course you want hilly. We looked at a beautiful piece of land in Oxford but it was high up and very exposed and every time we went it was blowing a gale! We were worried about establishing trees, orchard etc. We finally settled for a smaller block - just over 5 acres in the Wairau Valley out of Blenheim. We are very much starting out but have found all sorts of extra expense we didn't budget for properly - I guess that's just what happens! Will be interested to hear where you settle on buying and how things go with your kitset. We are hoping to do much of our build ourselves under the supervision of a licensed builder. Have drawn up the base plan ourselves as none of the kit sets really had a configuration we liked. Of course, it'll cost us to get the plans drawn up though!

First and foremost, welcome to LSB site and welcome hme, one day.
We are in Auckland, we built our home 7 months ago. I belief the building and council system is different over there. But the cost of building, as quoted by my builder, will never be what you set your budget on. It only stops when you decided it time to stop expanding. We came to an agreement of cost but advice us to add another 15%. He was spot on. BTW, our septic tank is 16k installed with an agreement to service it every 6 months which cost $195 per.

Whereabouts are you looking? Apparently Selwyn council is supposed to be really easy to deal with, compared to christchurch city council. One thing you'll need to check on is if there are covenants on the land. Some areas can be a little strict with exactly what you're allowed to build.
Good luck though! Sounds like an exciting time!!