The realities of being an owner builder part 1: wrapped in red tape
Welcome to our series about the realities of owner-building, inspired by our real-life experience as architect and owner-builder of Casa Connection: a small home with ginormous ambitions.
Building and construction professionals know this all too well, but if you’ve never been an owner-builder before, it’s easy to underestimate the sheer volume of work involved. And not just once the carpenters and trades are onsite. In fact, the preparation before the project even kicks off is extensive.
We had experienced many of the trials and tribulations of owner-building even before a single tradesperson had stepped boot on site.
For Casa Connection we spent 300 hours – yep, 8 whole work weeks – preparing for construction. That included acquiring quotes, assessing quotes to make sure they were accurate and nothing missed, ensuring our drawings were up-to-date and consistent, trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to find female tradespeople, acquiring permits, protection works notices and the list goes on…
Navigating the red tape
We could probably make a Cristo-style artwork and wrap Eureka Tower with all the red tape we’ve seen as owner builders. We kind of knew what we were getting into here: as architects we’re used to dealing with the reels and reels of red tape you need to cut through to realise a new home or renovation. But, being an owner builder opens up a whole new level of bureaucracy you need to navigate nimbly. All of the permits and rigmarole that are typically handled by the builder behind the scenes become your responsibility. And while, by virtue of our profession, we might have had an insight into what all of this would entail, we simply didn’t anticipate how many additional permits and permissions we needed to obtain as the owner-builder. From asset protection to protect council assets like footpaths and laneways to development contribution fees, drainage connection permits to public protection notices, the sheer volume of permits and fees required ate into our time and cost more than we had prepared for. Next time we’ll be better equipped to handle all this and calculate both the time and prime costs when we’re running our feasibility analyses.
Unexpected headaches: some challenges you can’t prepare for
Of course, every project throws up a challenge or two you can’t prepare for. One of the unexpected challenges we had to confront while owner-building Casa Connection was trying to contact our neighbour! Not as simple as knocking on their door in our case. For some permits, you need to notify your neighbour and get their signoff. We knew the house was occupied by tenants who kindly gave us the details of their real estate agent so we could track down the owner. However, the owner was overseas and by the time we were able to contact them and get their approval, a month had passed and our permit had expired!
Some things to prepare for
To give you an exhausting, but not exhaustive list, of what you may need to organise before works start:
Insurances: owner-builder’s insurance as well as public liability
Working within a road reserve permit
Temporary fencing around the building site
Hoarding permit
Working within a nature strip permit to connect services like stormwater
Traffic plan for when roads or parts of roads need to be blocked including a plan showing the signage you’ll use and where
Drainage connection permit
Occupying a public space permit including renting the space you are occupying
Building over an easement permit
Onsite detention permit (for water, not for naughty tradespeople)
Development contribution fee
But watch out for expiry dates!
Even once you’ve worked out exactly what permits you require, you’ve fastidiously put together your applications, responded to the requests for information and received stamp of approval, you’re not done yet! The other issue is that even once you have these permits in place, they expire or are only valid during a specific date range. So, if works are taking longer than anticipated, or you need to kick off once phase earlier than you thought, you need to be on top of which permits are valid, when, which are due to expire and quickly and efficiently renew them. In our local council’s defence, we found them very easy to deal with to amend and extend permits and approvals; they must deal with it all the time!
What about your hourly rate?
One thing we find owner-builders don’t anticipate is their own labour cost. While it might seem like there are savings to be made by taking on a project as an owner-builder, once you factor in all the time and energy required to pull it off, you might realise you’re better off letting the pros handle it, instead. An important calculation to include in your cost analysis and feasibly is your own hourly rate. Set this at the amount you would be able to earn doing your day job – or at least a minimum living wage.
If you decide to take this on, you are making a trade-off between the initial cost savings you might be able to enjoy by being an owner builder and the opportunity cost of other work you could be filling those hours and hours and hours (8 work weeks!) with instead.
That said, if you’re a gun project manager, you have an eye for details and you love a challenge, owner-building might be incredibly rewarding for you and a great role for you to take on.
Our advice
Our advice for being an owner builder is to work out exactly what permits and approvals you’ll need ahead of time. And dedicate a sizable amount of time to obtaining them. Don’t focus solely on how long the approval itself might take to be processed, but the amount of time it will take you to apply. You might not be able to anticipate every form and every checkbox you’ll require ahead of time, but being prepared to put in the hours to get all your ducks in a row before the fun stuff starts happening on-site will pay off in the end with less stress and a more streamlined build.