GUIDES & INSIGHTS · GUIDE 001

Rebuilding your first terrace. What it actually costs.

Almost every first rebuild goes over budget in the same three places, and none of them are the ones people worry about. Not the marble. Not the kitchen. The plot itself, the approval clock, and the 9% nobody adds. Here is the version we give clients before they sign anything.

Farhan Adenan · 6 Aug 2026 · 9 min read

Cost bands, setback figures and timeline phases are POV/LandedPro 2025–26 references for typical private landed projects. Every plot differs — your Road Line Plan, drainage reserves and site levels can move all of these materially.

The A&A question decides your budget before anything else. Keeping enough of the existing structure to qualify as Addition & Alteration rather than a full rebuild can save meaningful money and months of approval — but it constrains your layout permanently, and on a genuinely tired house it often costs more to work around the old frame than to clear it. Decide this with your architect on site, not on a spreadsheet.

The GST line is the one that catches people. Nine percent on a $1.5M build is $135,000 — a figure large enough to be somebody’s entire renovation budget, and it is routinely absent from the mental arithmetic done at the viewing. Add it first, not last.

Contingency is not optional and it is not padding. On an older terrace the probability of finding something — uneven floors, termite damage, a service running where no drawing shows it — is close to one. Budget it, and treat an unspent contingency as a windfall rather than an entitlement.

Site coverage cap of 50% applies across types post-DC24-05 (effective 1 March 2025); bungalows carry an additional 40% building-footprint sub-cap and GCBs 35%.

Height follows the zone, not your ambition. A two-storey zone gives you two storeys plus an attic — roughly 12m; a three-storey zone gets you 3½ and about 15.5m. The attic has to sit inside the gazetted envelope, and a roof terrace must stay at least 3m below the top of it. Every "can we just add another level" conversation ends here.

The March 2025 site-coverage change is the most-missed rule in the market. If your reference point is a neighbour’s house built before it, or a plan drawn against the old controls, your expectations are out of date. Check which regime your scheme is being designed under before you fall in love with a massing.

Add a 3–6 month buffer for the realistic worst case. Neighbour objections can extend the URA cycle by months on their own.

Plan your housing around 24 months, not 18. The single most expensive planning error we see is a rental lease signed against the optimistic end of this table. Two years of alternative accommodation is a real line in the project budget, and treating it as one changes which house you can afford to buy in the first place.

1. The Road Line Plan can shrink your plot. A future road widening reserve can take 1–3m off the front of the land you just bought, and it applies to the plot you build on, not the one on the title. Pull the RLP before you commit, not after.

2. Drainage reserves and PUB manholes. A drainage reserve cannot be built or cemented over, and a manhole sitting inside your lot dictates where things can go. Both are common and neither shows up on a property listing.

3. Tree Conservation Areas. Felling a protected tree carries a fine up to $50,000 per tree. If your plot sits in a TCA, the trees are part of the design brief whether you like them or not.

4. Sloped land. Unplanned ground works on a sloping site routinely add $50,000–$150,000. Level differences that look charming at a viewing are retaining structures on a drawing.

5. Party walls carry no automatic right of access. You do not have an inherent right to work on or from your neighbour’s side. This is a negotiation, and it is far cheaper conducted early and warmly than late and formally.

6. Uneven floors in older houses. A 10–30mm drift across a room is normal in an old terrace and costs $30,000–$80,000 to correct properly.

7. Termite damage is not insured. Home insurance does not cover it. On an older timber-framed house this is a survey item, not a footnote.

8. Bank financing disburses in stages. Construction loans release against progress claims, which creates genuine cash-flow gaps between what the builder has invoiced and what the bank has paid. Ask your banker for the disbursement schedule before you sign the build contract, and hold working capital against it.

And one that outlasts them all: the Defect Liability Period is only as good as the builder standing behind it. A twelve-month DLP from a contractor who will not answer the phone in month seven is a paragraph, not a protection. Choose accordingly.

If you own

If you are rebuilding to live in it, the contingency is the whole decision

A $1.6 million build is a $2.1 million project once fees, GST and contingency are in. The households that get hurt are not the ones who overspend on finishes — they are the ones who budgeted the construction quote and financed against that.

Confirm your envelope before you pay anyone for a design. 50% site coverage, 7.5 m front setback on a Category 4 or 5 road, 2 m rear, and 2 m at the side only if you are on a corner. A design drawn against the wrong envelope is paid for twice.

If you invest

If you are rebuilding to sell, check what the market pays for new build here

You are spending roughly $2.1 million and taking two years of carrying cost, interim rent and execution risk. That only works if completed landed in your specific street transacts far enough above the equivalent older house to cover all three.

It often does not, and the honest test is a local one: find what rebuilt terraces on your road actually sold for against unrebuilt ones. If that gap is smaller than $2.1 million minus what you paid, the rebuild is a lifestyle decision, which is a perfectly good reason — just not an investment case.

VALUE FINDS · ISSUE 001

5 of the cheapest freehold 4-bedders with 1,500+ sqft — from $1.8M

Five real listings, five exit records, and the maths that separates cheap from value.

NEIGHBOURHOODS & MASTERPLAN · GUIDE 004

Telok Kurau: freehold at $1,400–1,700 psf, ten minutes from $2,900-psf launches

Freehold at $1,400–$1,700 psf, ten minutes from $2,900 launches. The lorongs, priced honestly.

Dataset — Cost bands, setback figures and timeline phases are POV/LandedPro 2025–26 references for typical private landed projects. Every plot differs — your Road Line Plan, drainage reserves and site levels can move all of these materially.