Typically 25% -100% more than the equivalent house provided by a Volume Home Builder. (Unless you'll be an Owner Builder) However, most custom houses are not 'equivalent' so it depends greatly on the design, specifications, scale, and its location accommodating for site specific conditions BYO Floor Plan’s service is designed to help you identify the potential cost of your custom home ASAP and at various points throughout the preconstruction process. This will help give you piece of mind and avoid wasting time designing something that isn’t feasible. Our flagship service delivers three comparable quotes from licensed builders based on the plans and specifications we have collectively agreed upon and then prepared. We have various blog posts and other FAQ below that discuss factors relating to the costs associated with building a custom home and how you can save money. Relevant Blog posts: What Does a Custom House Cost to build? Why are architecturally designed houses more expensive? Please note, that if you have a specialist consultants for the design of interiors, lighting, landscaping etc, we cannot really control the cost of your build as our influence on the overall construction cost would become diluted. If this is your plan and budget is a key concern, we recommend you engage a single builder or quantity surveyor early on who can continually run cost estimates as various designs and specifications proposed and developed.

It is easy to design a house that is too expensive, which can be a real trap - just like it's easy to take too many things on camping trip. Research, Preparation, Flexibility, and utilising free resources are some key principals for saving money on your custom build too. With this in mind, key areas to save money on a new build include: (excluding interior design) 1. Working with the topography of the land 2. Having an efficient floor plan that is of an appropriate size 3. Avoiding extra storeys, roof terraces, pavilions or additional wings of the main building 4. Using readily available materials/products 5. Using conventional building methods/systems, 6. Minimising custom made elements 7. Avoiding materials with a labour intensive installation 8. Simplify the building's geometry 9. Understand the major costs outside of the house - Eg Pool, Retaining walls and landscaping allowance 10. Forgetting artisan products made in Byron Bay! Relevant Blog posts: What Does a Custom House Cost to build? Why are architecturally designed houses more expensive? While every project's budget varies, one consistent aspect is 'construction labour' in Australia is not cheap. Unlike other parts of the world where some construction workers are illegal immigrants paid cash by their bosses, if your working with a respectable builder you can expect their subcontractors to be more legitimate, use the right tools and procedures, therefore being priced accordingly. Save yourself money in the build with a considered and well documented design.

Our Building Design Service Page, outlines our services, which are provided in distinct stages, each with their own fees. This pricing model information is a guide only and be confirmed by booking a Design Brief consultation with us. All our clients are provided with a tailored fee proposal with various pricing packages to ensure you’re only paying for what’s relevant to you. Regardless of the services you hire us for, all service stages are paid across multiple invoices to help stager the preconstruction costs.

The short answer is: We could, but you would actually end up paying more in fees and it would take longer. With the design of any complex system you need to prototype design options and refine a design through various iterations or tests, otherwise the run the risk that the first iteration has minor or major flaws that can’t easily be fixed. A set of our drawings for construction typically includes 20-40 pages of detailed information. If we just started at that and you decided to shift one room, we’d need to update basically every page because the effects would snowball throughout all the types of drawings. It’s also quite time consuming to prepare the working drawings, so you’d need to wait a longer time period to see your design brief presented for the first time and there is almost a zero percent chance you would want to stick with the first iteration. A final factor is you don’t want to give council drawings that include everything as that can confuse council officers who are less experienced with reading detailed plans and if they want to change the floor plan, the cost implications to redo it could be astronomical thanks to sheer amount of content that needs to be redone. Also you typically want as much freedom for wiggle room after your approval as possible so you don’t need to wait send drawings back to council because you want to change something minor like the width of a window.

After designing your house we will naturally know it inside out better than anybody else. For that reason some clients hire us for the optional ‘Services During Construction’ stage to keep us at their side. To read more about this service stage click here Our assistance during this state is not required by law, so you are welcome to trust the builder to pick up and correct potential construction mistakes or oversights and answer any technical queries you have throughout the build. We can sometimes be booked up for weeks or months at a time so by engaging us for this service, you know that we can make your construction enquiries/design changes a high priority.

To it simply what can be a nightmare for anyone without experience, BYO Floor Plan splits the preconstruction design process into typically 4 key phases A. Drawings for you (the client) In the first phase we speak with you, flesh out your design brief (refer here) and begin to explore multiple design options whether you have a floor plan or not to start with. We always prepare at least two floor plans to give the chance to see the design from another perspective to consider implementing ideas that hadn’t come to you earlier. After we have agreed upon the floor plan’s layout we will prepare 3D sketches of the house’s exterior so you can begin to understand how it will look from the street, sides and waterway or park etc. B. Drawings for Council: To approve relaxations to various zoning requirements council needs detailed drawings, but not quite as detailed as what the builder will need. With the design concept established prior we can now progress the project with further technical drawings that are in a conventional format for council offers to assess. In preparation for the next stage these drawings are perfect for the engineer to start the technical designs from as the dimensions and shape of the building has been locked in. C. Drawings for Building Approval/Builder A building certifier will assess the building design against other criteria that wasn’t of interest to the council prior to issuing building approval aka building permit or construction certificate. This includes assessing third party drawings and reports such as those prepared by a structural engineer or Energy Efficiency consultant. Not only will our drawings progress in detail to match these external specifications and reports we will prepare additional drawing types that convey the electrical layout, ceiling design, window and door types and minor construction works around the outside of the home that will all need to be included in your building contract. The finished result will be a complete Working Drawings package D. Interior Design (Optional) You will also need to have way of communicating the interior design to your builder. As the interior design does not legally require professional design input, we keep this as an optional service for our clients. If you wish to perform this design work yourself we can provide templates and guidance to assist. Check out this blog article for more information about each step: Coming Soon

Armed with a completed Working Drawings package, you can obtain a quote from a builder, ideally one who you had been keeping in the loop throughout the process. If you don’t have a builder in mind, BYO Floor Plan offers a tender service in which we will invite 3 local or qualified builders to bid on the project by submitting fixed price tender offers that are comparable. If you have suitable builder(s) in mind they can be included in this tender. By having multiple licensed builders who all bid for your business, you might get a more competitive price or at least gain a tangible indication of the market price to build your home, if you can’t just stomach trusting one builder’s pricing. You will have the opportunity to speak with all builders and review the tenders to decide which company you'd like to have a sit down meeting with us present. Its important to have this meeting as they will be taking on the responsibility of building a house which has been carefully designed specifically for you so its the perfect time to confirm any technical, logistical or even small questions that are important. The builder will write up a contract for you and then manage the construction once engaged. To read more about our tender service stage click here: Coming Soon If you want to take advantage of our tender service you will need an interior design documented so all builders can price the full and identical fit-out. The interiors can take a project from on budget to over double the price, so its critical they know what is being installed inside your home if you want to be able to get a true representation of the price and for the prices to be comparable. If you trust a single builder you can often work out the interiors as you go, or just accept/choose from their default inclusions list. To read more about our Interior Design service stage click here Coming Soon

We're here to help with exactly that. While we cannot legally provide the permits ourselves, due to a conflict of interest, we can refer you to a building certifier who will be the one to issue most of your approvals. We can lead the correspondence with with this consultant, meaning you will only need to contact them for payments of fees, and to compete legal documentation which we can prefill on your behalf. If you have a builder onboard from the start of the design process they will often have a preference of certifier and might wish lead this process for you.

Builder's like to work locally, so asking other construction professionals or tradespeople in the area is a quick way to understand their reputation and identify which builders are mentioned more than once. There are different types of builders, and if your reading this you likely want a "Custom Home Builder". This is not to be confused with a Home Builder that also builds 'their own' custom homes, of which there are lots of big names. You will have your own set of plans and specifications, so its important that the builder you chose can work from documents prepared by building designers or architects, not just their own internal drafting team. Architectural designed custom homes are a whole different ball game that some builders and subcontractors will have never played in. It's also important to choose a builder who has experience managing other construction projects that share the building systems your design employs. For example, if your project is to be built from suspended concrete slabs (that are significantly more complex than a typical timber frame house) you'd be trusting they get yours right on their first try. Jackhammering up concrete mistakes is slow and might not even be realistically possible if its a major mistake. If this is the case, speak to them about which subcontractors will bring the onsite wisdom for complex aspects of the build. In most cases, reputable builders will have several past clients who'd be happy to take brief phone call or even let you walk through their home to see what the builder did for them. You'll be forming a relationship with your builder over the best part of a year or more, so hopefully they are somebody you can get along with and most importantly trust.

While you don’t need to have legally settled on the land, you do need to have selected a property. It is essential that we understand the natural characteristics and technical aspects of the property, otherwise we are essentially designing blind. Buildings are not just sculptures, they real things people inhabit to live, work, sleep and play. They are designed to protect it's occupants from the elements and to enhance their enjoyment of positive aspects of the surrounding setting. Designing a house that doesn’t have a set location is an activity for somebody who does not take design as seriously as us. Until you understand the: topography, where sun will rise and set, where the breezes come from, where the opportunities for views and requirements for privacy exist, there is not much we can do besides show you examples of other projects you might like various elements of. The only exceptions where designing a custom floor plan without a specific property in mind makes sense is for a relocatable home or house boat, which are niches we do not focus on. If you're looking for tips on what characteristics make a great block of land, check out this blog post.

There are several things you can do before you've found your ideal property: Go to open homes and: - Get an understanding of the minimum floor area your family could live with - Identify some arrangement of spaces that seem like they could suit. eg a self contained guest wing - See how far your budget would go for something already on the market (factoring in the potential land and landscaping cost) - Save photos of the interiors and architectural elements you love - See how much they ended up selling for - Ask who built the home Research the web for: - Examples of custom homes in your ideal area - To understand how custom homes can differ from typical homes, but are typically smaller if not quite expensive - Attractive Colour schemes - Kitchen Appliances - Energy Efficiency materials and utility types - Learn about Passive Solar Design - Landscaping ideas and DIY Projects you could do to personalise your new home - Beware of Instagram, Pinterst, Facebook etc that will focus on the most impressive projects that are also exceedingly expensive - Potential designers who you resonate with and could trust to lead such large project Speak to: - Other people: Who have built a house, especially those who used their own designer or architect - Tradespeople and builders: to identify what builders are well known in the area as being reputable and to understand the level f finish they typically provide. - Real estate agents: To understand how much custom homes sell for in the area vs typical houses built by Home Builders. - Your bank: Learn about your borrowing capacity and construction loans available to you. These will have differences from other loan types.

Custom Home: A custom home is designed specifically for the end user (Often the property owner) to their own unique requirements and tastes. Typically the property owner directly engages the services of a building designer or architect to conceive a unique design that a volume home builder wouldn’t have been able to create by just 'customising' a standard plan from their collection. This process allows the client and designer to identify the favourable aspects of the property and create a design brief of unique inclusions and characteristics to integrate in a holistic design response. Ideally the outcome will be a well-considered configuration that will reward the owner long term in practicality, flexibility, ambiance and a high resale value. The priority is getting the design right from the start, vs making a profit on a standard home that has been customised with features. Project Home: A project home or 'spec home', is a house that is built with the extension to sell at the highest price the market will pay with a relatively low build cost to maximize profits. That might sound good, but in order attract the most buyers, the design will typically be more conservative in its styling and configuration. To compensate, the developer will often try to make up for this with materialistic features that either photograph well or can be listed in a real estate add. eg 10m long pool with spa, large windows and a media room. There is no guarantee the pool will be situated well with privacy, the windows positioned for the best natural light or the media room sound insulated. The reason being, many buyers wouldn't notice these flaws until living there for a few weeks. While some project homes are 'designed' by a building designers or architects, their client was likely a builder, so the brief is typically one strongly influenced by the simplifying the construction at the cost of long term design benefits for the occupants.

Its easy to overlook some key factors when designing a home if its your first time or if the designer has priorities other things such as just ‘customising’ a standard plan, delegating it to less experienced staff or rushing a job through. This blog article summaries common mistakes made, including rejection by council, large west facing windows, lack of privacy, and going over budget (Blog coming soon)

There are 10 key considerations we will always discuss with our clients when designing a floor plan. 1. Solar Orientation = Natural light & shading 2. Views and Privacy 3. Accessibility, Storeys or Levels 4. Family, Work, Entertaining and Sleep zones 5. Connection with Outdoor Living and Landscape 6. Budget defines Floor Area (and vice versa) 7. Flexibility, Adaptability & Storage 8. Building Construction type 9. Resale Value / Future Owner Expectations 10. Utilities and Energy Efficiency Read about them here: Blog post coming soon

In Australia, the average sized freestanding house built in 2021 was to to be 239m2 in total floor area, according to the ABS (Including all areas under the main roof) However, depending on the suburb, this can vary quite a bit. While entry level freestanding houses on small lots might be 150m2, large estate homes for the rich and famous can be over 1000m2! Custom homes that would be considered more 'architectural' tend to be modest in size so that the owners budget can be invested in the quality over quantity. If you'd like high ceilings, expansive amounts of glass and stunning finishes, you will need to start with a conservative and efficient footprint, so you have more money to spend in each square meter of the home.

While many of our clients have drawn their own floor plan, either neatly or just a sketch this certainly isn't required. Actually about 40% of our clients would prefer to leave it to us and just provide a verbal or written brief of the ideas they do have. Scott Bowden, our lead designer has a Bachelor of Architectural Studies and prior to starting BYO Floor Plan, worked for 8 years at architecture firm designing hundreds of floor plans for a range of projects such as luxury homes, renovations, duplexes, townhouses and apartment buildings. He prides himself on listing to the client's wishes, ideas and concerns and helps them to extract the aspects that will be most important to include in their new home. With our experience and your design brief to draw from, coming up with a custom floor plan configuration to suit your unique design brief and make the most of what your property has to offer, is one of services we do best. Even the clients who come to us with their own floor plan sketch are often open to our ideas for creating a second version that has all the same parts but arranged as if we had created it from scratch. We can help improve the flow of the floor plan, incorporate popular ensuite and kitchen layouts and even often convert the guest bedroom into a self contained wing of the house. This second design allows our clients to compare the benefits of both floor plans and progress the project knowing they've explored more options.

You don't need fancy software or an app to draw your own floor plan. Check out this blog article for a simple and proven 3 step process: Coming soon Advanced Floor Plan Design Course: Coming soon

Not knowing where to locate stairs on a floor plan, (or forgetting the) is one of the most common problems many clients have when designing their own house. It can be difficult to make each level's unique floor plan work while sharing a common stair location, not to mention where you enter the staircase is different at each end. So don't feel bad if this is something you've battled with. The good news is there we have rules of thumb and tips to include a staircase in your home that can be function, easy to access and even an architectural feature. Check out our blog article: Coming soon

If building a new home, it is a requirement to have a energy efficiency report prepared that will specify various energy efficiency related items to satisfy the Building Code of Australia (BCA) Default Energy Efficiency Report: Unfortunately, many designers and architects are unaware of how this process actually works and may just palm this off, assuming it can be completed at the end of a project for by a certifier or only cost the client about $250. While part of this can be true, the ramifications of this very basic report being done at the end can be horrifying for the owner. Consider how much human thought could go into a custom report that's only worth $250. The specifications in many last minute reports can end up costing costs tens of thousands of dollars after the client's thought they had a builder's quote locked in. Use an Energy Consultant: BYO Floor Plan recommends using one of our preferred energy consultants half way through our service get preliminary feedback on the energy efficient products we may need to include, either to improve the performance of your home or just meet the legal requirements. This gives us a chance to modify the design slightly to reduce the reliance of high performance materials, that often have less influence than the general shape and composition of the building. Passive Solar Design: By default, we design most of our projects with Passive Solar Design principles in mind, which will contribute greatly to reducing the extent of expensive energy saving solutions that are sometimes like a Band-Aid fix to flawed design. We live in a beautiful part of the world where carefully considered designs only require air conditioning and heating to be available 1-3 months per year.