A new build, or a house with a history

A house and land package is usually two contracts, not one. You buy the land from the developer. You sign a separate building contract with the builder. They complete at different times and they’re priced separately, which is why the figure on the billboard isn’t a single amount you hand over on a single day.

That structure has one large consequence. On a package built this way, land transfer duty is worked out on the land, because when you buy it there’s no house on it yet. On an established home it’s worked out on the whole property. For a lot of families that gap is what decides which suburb they end up in.

While the house goes up you pay the builder in stages as each part is finished, and the loan draws down to match. You pay interest only on what’s been drawn, which is gentler than people expect. Paying rent and a growing mortgage in the same month is not gentle at all, and that’s the part of building that catches families out.

An established home is a known quantity, and that’s the whole argument for it. Stand in the kitchen at four in the afternoon and you’ll see exactly where the sun lands. You get the neighbour’s tree, the state of the fences, the traffic, the street on a Sunday. Nothing has to be imagined.

You’re also buying every decision the last owners made and every one they put off. Older homes around Doveton and Dandenong have had decades of weather and a run of different owners, and the money in them sits in the parts you can’t see: the wiring, the roof, the drainage, the bones under the floor. On a house like that, a building inspection is the cheapest money you’ll spend all year. Get one.

• A new build gives you a fixed build price, a warranty, and a home nobody has worn out. It also gives you a settlement date that can move, a bare block, and a street that stays a building site for a while.
• An established home gives you a real street, grown trees, shops that already exist, and a date you can plan a move around. It also gives you a maintenance list, older systems, and whatever the last renovation covered up.
• A new build almost always needs money after you move in, for fencing, landscaping, a driveway, blinds and flyscreens. Read the inclusions list the way you would read a contract, because that’s what it is.
• An established home needs money too. Just less predictably, and occasionally all at once.

Neither list wins. The right answer depends on whether your life can absorb a delay or a surprise, and only you know which of those two would hurt more.

We ask three questions, and they’re always the same three. When do you have to be out of where you’re living now. What happens to your budget if settlement moves by a season. And what’s the one thing in a home you won’t compromise on, because there’s always one, and it’s rarely the thing people name first.

After that it stops being a debate and becomes a shortlist. We sell both kinds, so we have no reason to push you either way. If the answer is another year of saving, you’ll hear that from us too.