Your journey
Building a home.
You have a stand, or you are about to have one. From here to a finished house is a sequence, and most of the expensive mistakes are made in the first two steps, before anybody has laid a block.
Where you probably are
- You own a stand, or you have been allocated one, and you are not sure what you are allowed to do with it or what it can hold.
- You have been quoted for plans by two people, the prices were nothing like each other, and you cannot tell what the difference is.
- You already have a house and want to add to it: a room, a second storey, a cottage at the back.
If none of these are you, message us anyway. Half the useful conversations we have start with somebody who was not sure they needed one.
The order it happens in
Five steps. The first one costs nothing and it is the one people skip.
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01
Start with the stand, not the house
Before you fall in love with a plan, look at what you actually own. The slope, which way it faces, where the boundaries are, what services reach it and where the access is. All of that decides what can be built and what it will cost to build. A plan chosen before this happens is a plan that gets redrawn.
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02
Decide between a ready-made plan and a custom design
A ready-made plan adapted to your stand is much cheaper and it is the right answer for a lot of people. A custom design earns its fee when the stand is awkward, the slope is serious, or the way you want to live does not fit a standard layout. Tell us about the site and we will say which one you are, including when the answer is the cheaper one.
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03
Get the design done properly
Concept in under two weeks, a full drawing set in about four. Two revision rounds are included. This is where you move walls, because it costs an afternoon here and it costs weeks once the slab is down.
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04
Council submission
You get a complete set of council submission drawings as part of the design, and we help you deal with queries when they come up. What nobody can promise you is an approval or a date, because council decisions and council turnaround are outside anyone's control. Anybody who guarantees either is telling you something they cannot know.
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05
Build
Your builder works from the drawings, and we answer their questions while they do. Full construction supervision is a separate service if you want somebody watching the site on your behalf, and it is quoted on request.
What it costs
The design is the part we can price honestly, and we publish it: from $180 for a ready-made plan adapted to your stand, $320 to $1,200 for a custom home design, depending on size and complexity. You get the number before we start, and payment runs 30% deposit with 70% on completion.
The build is a different matter, and we will not put a figure on it here. Cost per square metre depends on your site, your finishes, your builder and what materials are doing this month, and anybody who quotes you a rate without seeing the stand is guessing. What we will do is design to a budget you tell us, which is a far more useful thing than an estimate you cannot rely on.
What usually goes wrong
Buying the plan before understanding the stand
The most common and the most expensive. A plan drawn for a flat rectangular site does not sit on a slope, and adapting it after the fact costs more than starting correctly would have.
Designing for the budget you wish you had
It is much cheaper to design a house you can actually build now, with the structure ready for what you add later, than to draw the whole dream and stop halfway through building it.
Treating drawings as a formality for council
Vague drawings are why builders' quotes come back wildly different and why arguments start in month three. A complete set is what lets you compare quotes on the same basis, and it is what a bank will want to see.
Leaving the cottage until later without saying so
If there is any chance of a cottage, a second storey or a flat at the back, say it at the first conversation. It changes where the driveway goes and where the services run, and it costs nothing to plan for now.
Common questions
I have not bought the stand yet. Is it too early to talk to you?
No, it is the best time. Looking at a stand before you commit tells you what it can carry and what will be awkward about it, and that conversation is free. It has talked people out of sites that would never have worked.
How much does it cost to build a house in Zimbabwe?
Nobody can answer that honestly without seeing your stand, your brief and your finishes, and the ones who give you a confident number per square metre are guessing. Tell us your total budget and we will design something that fits inside it, which is the version of this answer that is actually useful.
Can you handle everything, or do I need other people?
Design, drawings and council submission drawings come from us. Engineering is handled in-house, and if you already have consultants you trust we work with them instead. You appoint your own builder, and we can supervise on your behalf as a separate service.
Start here
Tell us what you want to build
A house, a brand, a website, a system, or all of it. Send a message and we will map out the path from idea to reality.