Plans and builders of multi dwellings/townhouses

[jasperjue]

In the spirit of "there are no dumb questions".

Is there a good starting point to get some information on floor plans for townhouses.

The background to this is
I'm looking at buying a 980 sqm property and am thinking about building a few townhouses on them or multiple single storey residences.

I've looked at the development plans for the council and it all looks doable.

Now i want to see some floor plans so that i can get a better idea of what can fit and what i can get and at what price.

Do i just go through one of the big builders like Rossdale, fairmont, etc or are there specialists for this type of development ?.

any direction and advice is appreciated. I did a search of the forum and didn't find anything that helped, hence my question.

cheers

 

[MichaelW]

Jasperjue,

When starting my due diligence for my townhouse development I went and visited a heap of similar developments in the area. They all had glossy brochures and all those brochures had floor plans included.

Now that I've engaged my architect for this first development I know that in future I can give him a quick call and ask how many units I can fit on a specific site I'm interested in and the gross realisation and he'd give me a quick answer. But that's a benefit of having started to build my team around me. It obviously didn't help with buying this first one.

As a rule of thumb work on around 150m2 total built area each or a 75m2 footprint as a rough guide if doing townhouses. Obviously if they're two story units then the footprint is 150m2. You can go up or down from this depending on what your market requires.

As for price, I'm working on $2,000/m2 for a high level finish in Sydney but could have got away with $1,500/m2 if I'd compromised on quality. You should be able to get away with less than that for a custom build in SA. If its project then its obviously going to be less again, but project units/townhouses are a bit of a rarity as I understand it.

Good luck with it.

Cheers,
Michael.

 

[AndyB]

Jasperjue,

I also followed a similiar process to Michael when assesing vacant land for townhouse development. First thing to do is mark up on a scale drawing of proposed lot within any required setbacks, easements etc. Then place on basic footprints of units (just use outline to start). 150m2 for single and 75m2 for 2 storey would be a good start. If you can get this all to work, then filling in the floorplan is when all the fun starts. I also looked through a lot of project home brochures and cut and pasted different elements of their design to come up with something that would work. The most important thing I believe also is to become very familiar with any local Devlopment Control Plans, as these will have a major influence on your design eg Floor/Space ratios, landscaped areas etc

Regards
Andrew

 

[tcocaro]

how long is a peice of string....

basically there is no rule of thumb.... just a process..

some councils work on GFA (gross floor area e.g. brisbane City Council) others work on Plot Ratio e.g. ACT and others a mix of the two and then there are unique cases e.g. Redcliffe where its a set of 100 rules\regs (they have since changed this).

Therefore I suggest you read the DCP for the council you are intending to build within. Forget easements etc (when determining yield) because if your going to do that then you might aswell think of, setbacks/turning circles/private open space/overlook/contours/raising/levels etc etc etc i.e. this is the architects job.

Just try to understand how many SQM of floor space (GFA) or plot ratio you can build then make an edjucated guess for the area required e.g. 80sqm for plot ration on a double storey more for single etc. then simply divide the maximum developable area by this figure. This should provide yield. If it comes out e.g. 4.5 then this is pretty good because you have some leeway and know you could probably get away with building 4. look over any that come our 3.99.

Then ensure you have a feasability period so your architect can check and provide a usability study and let you know the yield, this way you save a lot of time.

If you have a friendly architect you can ask him to do you rough yield analysis but from my experience this costs $$$ and architects and you wouldnt want to bother him 100 times a week with each site you think might be the one.

Oh and it goes without saying check the zoning first, for small sites dont get stars in your eyes and think of rezoning aint gonna happen.

And regarding cost $2k is MASSIVE!!! this is more than all qs figures currently out there.. range it from $1000 to $1400 (see rider hunt \ napier & blakeley \ bmtqs or some other QS firm

Hope this helps.

 

[MichaelW]

And regarding cost $2k is MASSIVE!!! this is more than all qs figures currently out there.. range it from $1000 to $1400 (see rider hunt \ napier & blakeley \ bmtqs or some other QS firm

Great post mate. Agree with everything except for this last little bit. I went to three different quantity surveyors (Washington Brown, Turner Townsend and Heymann Cohen) to confirm my square metre build cost for the area I'm developing in the density I'm developing and the level of finish I want to achieve. They all said $1800 to $2000 per m2.

Sydney, premium level finish, high density MUH works out at that cost. My job now is to try and squeeze that down for my 3 unit development in Mona Vale. By the way, the end product sells for $750K upwards. Some units in prime locations in Mona Vale are fetching $1.8M so you need to build in premium quality to get those sorts of realisations.

But you're right that not everyone will be spending $2000 per m2. That's the absolute top end of the market.

Cheers,
Michael.

 

[tcocaro]

ouch

did a qs with rawlinsons before and they came out 2k aswell but then i saw the detail (kitchen 16,000). If you speak to mass production developers out there they dont even have a 16k kitchen in their own homes.

Remember target market is most important, putting a cheap kitchen in a point piper development would probably not be a good idea... hell you would probably have to spend 16k just for the door mat.

regarding your level of finish remember you must think from the perspective of how can i make each dollar count, dont simply cheat and say ok my target market is high-end and therefore ill buy high-end finishes. For instance if you ask lawyers\solicitors and the rest of the well to do out there which is the best kitchen finish they will all say granite... so buy granite... dont go to the kitchen supplier and walk out with corian which is 10 times more expensive and no one knows what it is.

Dont overcapitalise...

anyways good luck on your development (dont cheat keep that 10% contingency in there)