What makes a block secretly expensive to build on?

dirt-and-dreams

Looking at land around Clyde North and Officer and im starting to realise the cheap block might not actually be the cheap block.

Slope, soil, retaining, drainage, easements, driveway length, rock, fill, sewer location, bushfire rating, weird setbacks - feels like there are a lot of ways a block can look fine online and then punish you later.

What are the things people wish they checked before buying land?

Not talking dream views or nice suburbs, more the boring stuff that quietly adds $20k, $50k, or more before the house even starts.

KelpieMum

Rock. My parents bought a sloping block outside Toowoomba and the excavator hit floaters the size of washing machines on day two. $14k extra just to get to a level pad, and the quote said site costs TBC the whole way through.

If the blocks around you are half built, go talk to those owners. They know exactly whats under the ground and most people love a whinge about their builder.

fuzzy-muppet

THE CHEAP BLOCK IS CHEAP BECAUSE THE DEVELOPER ALREADY DID THIS MATHS AND YOU HAVENT

fall across the block, fill from when they cut the estate, sewer in the back corner. thats the holy trinity of gotcha. everyone stares at the price per square and nobody reads the engineering plans sitting right there on the developers website

tileandtea

Sewer location got us in Sydney. Main ran across the back corner with an easement, which meant the alfresco we wanted needed pier and beam over the line plus water authority approval. Add the concrete encasement and it was about 9 grand nobody budgeted for.

Before you buy, pull up the service diagram. It costs next to nothing and shows where the sewer actually runs. Ten minutes of reading saves a redesign.

FairGo-Frem

Driveway length is the sneaky one over here in Perth. Battleaxe block looked like a bargain until you price 40 metres of driveway, plus the trench for power and NBN and water down the same run. Every metre of that handle costs you at both ends.

Also check where the crossover is allowed to go. Council made us shift ours because of a street tree and that added kerb works we never saw coming.

toast-owl

Bushfire rating. The block we nearly bought backed onto a reserve and came back BAL-29 in the assessment. Different windows, screens, sealed eaves, ember guards, the estimate moved about 18k before we walked away.

The block two streets in from the reserve was BAL-12.5 and basically standard spec. Same estate, same soil, very different house cost.

JenW88

Adding one from our contract review: corner blocks. Everyone wants one until they learn both street frontages need the expensive fencing, the setbacks eat the yard from two directions, and the crossover rules are stricter.

Our corner block looked 15k cheaper than mid-street. By the time the extra fencing and the second frontage landscaping requirements were priced it was line ball.

gumleaf_88

One more for the list: overland flow paths. Block near us looked perfect, turned out council maps had a stormwater flow path across one corner, which meant a no-build zone and pier requirements on part of the slab.

Free to check on the council mapping site before you offer. The agent is not going to volunteer it.