Nolan structural options

So I've been doing a little bit of extra research on some of the main structural options that we've tentatively put into the quote. Apparently now that our quote has been submitted to M head office, we can't change them through our sales consultant anymore, but will be able to do final additions/subtractions at the preliminary contract stage.

Anyway, stepping back in time a little bit, this is basically how you price up a new house build -

"When you invest your initial $1,000 deposit, Metricon will fix the base price of your home for 150 days. The final cost of your home is the sum of:

1. the base price of the home type (including facade) you selected;
2. any applicable site costs to build on your land;
3. the cost of any variations approved to your home; and
4. your chosen options and home specification selections."

1) This is a pretty standard approach from the major project home builders. The base price has a certain set of standard inclusions - eg timber frame, roof tiles, walls (duh!), basic kitchen, bathroom, laundry etc, doors, garage door, windows etc.

2) Site costs are probably most new builders greatest fears, as there's a lot of uncertainties in site costs. In a perfect world, your block of land is ideal for building your selected house and site costs are $0 extra. For our block, or consultant has put in a figure of $30,000 provisional costs because of many factors, including:

• We're knocking down an established house, so the site will most likely be a "P" class
  
• We're in an established area, so access to the site is a bit harder
• We have an easement at the back of the property as most land sites do, but we have an additional easement along the side of the property which we'll probably need a whole bunch of piers to avoid encroaching upon

And in a comment from one reader of this blog, due to being in a flood prone area, their site costs are estimated at $45,000. Not knowing much about flood areas, I'd imagine there's some provision for having the habitable floor level above the flood risk level, plus much reinforcement/foundation for the slab?

3 & 4) I'm not sure what the difference is between variations and options/specifications, but both will cost your some money!

Lately I've been thinking about some of the structural options we've chosen, mainly reasearching Colorbond roofing and eaves.

Colorbond on our house is approx $3000 more for the Colorbond, $1,600 for the sarking underneath. While I love the zero maintenance aspect of colorbond, Tina likes tiles as I've mentioned in a previous post, and here is where we could save $4000 or so. We'll probably talk it over more later, but I'm happy to have tiles now, I think! Plus the new houses in our street (the Porter Davis design across the road, and the Ashford home 3 doors down) both have tiled roofs.



I've also mentioned big eaves to our sales consultant, and she's put in 600mm eaves all around the first floor as an upgrade, which is about $3,300 additional. The standard plan has 450mm eaves to the front half of the first floor. I've been researching lately, and since the front of the house is facing north, eaves to the north give the most benefit compared to eaves all around - so potentially this is another area we could save some money in.

By dropping the colorbond roof, and having the standard eaves, save $7,500 or so? Mmmm... decisions to be made! Comments anyone?

I'd also be quite interested to hear about other people's experience with timelines since leaving their deposit - eg how long did it take to hear back from M about colour and electrical appointments, and how long until the prelim contract appointment?

Thanks for reading!

Tim