After a hundred projects, the pattern is clear. The builds that went wrong were mostly fine. The sites that were bought wrong never recovered.
The build is the visible part
Everyone worries about the builder. Will they go broke, will they run late, will the variations blow the budget. Those are real risks, and we manage them with fixed-scope contracts, milestone dates and a builder tied down before settlement. But a bad build costs you tens of thousands. A bad buy costs you the project.
Five ways the buy goes wrong
- Paying for yield that isn't there. The agent says “triplex potential”. The block is 17 m wide. Terraces need 18. You paid for three and got two.
- Missing the constraint. A sewer easement, a mapped tree, a bushfire category, a stormwater problem with no fall to the street. Found after exchange, every one of them is a redesign and a delay.
- Buying at auction. The price is set by the most optimistic bidder in the room. The margin they accepted is now yours.
- Terms that strangle cash. A 10% deposit and a 42-day settlement on a site that needs six months of approvals. You are paying interest on land you cannot touch.
- Falling in love. The site is beautiful. The street is perfect. The numbers do not work, and you buy it anyway.
The nine steps, in order
The reason our process starts with site procurement and site potential, and only reaches the builder at step six, is that the first five steps are where the money is made or lost.
- Site procurement — off-market, through relationships
- Site potential — LMR, zoning, width, yield, constraints, then a real feasibility
- Consultant team — planner, arborist, architect engaged early
- Settlement terms — negotiated to give the project room
- Approval — CDC or DA, whichever genuinely suits the site
- Builder tie-down — fixed scope and price before settlement
- Build — held to milestones
- Finance — brokers who fund small residential development every week
- Sale — the right agent, the right month
The first five are done before a builder is named; by then the margin is already locked.
By the time a shovel goes in, the margin has been locked for months.
The feasibility that says walk
The most valuable thing we do is tell people not to buy. On a typical month we look at far more sites than we pursue. Most fail on width, constraints or price. A feasibility that always says yes is not a feasibility. It is a sales tool.
What a good feasibility contains
- End values from comparable new product in the same suburb, not the agent's number
- Build cost from a builder's current rates, not last year's
- Consultant, approval, finance, holding, agent and contingency lines, all of them
- A downside case with lower end values and a longer program
- A clear number for what the land is worth to this project, and a walk-away price
Before you exchange
Send us the address. We will run the hour test and tell you what we see. If you have already fallen for it, we will tell you that too.