Home designs for a dollar could save thousands

Sabra Lane: Fancy a new architect-designed home for just one dollar? Well, the plans, at least. New South Wales residents are being offered that deal as part of a State Government program tackling the housing crisis. A so-called pattern book of low-rise home designs will allow property owners to access pre-approved Government home designs in what’s been promised as a way to reduce red tape and costs and speed up the delivery of new homes. Myles Houlbrook-Walk reports.

Myles Houlbrook-Walk : New South Wales may be home to some of the nation’s most expensive real estate but the State Government believes it’s come up with a better blueprint for slashing the cost and approval time for new housing. Paul Scully is the Planning Minister for New South Wales.

Paul Scully : The Government architect has endorsed eight terrace townhouse and manor townhouse designs that will be available for $1,000 per design for all the technical drawings. But for the first six months, the Government is significantly subsidising access to these, making them available to everyone for a dollar.

Myles Houlbrook-Walk : Paul Scully wants people to take a chance on these eight approved designs for low-rise homes. For the next six months, they’re being offered to those wanting to build a new home at the cut price rate of one dollar.

Paul Scully : Well, we’ll see how successful it is over the next six months but we’re confident people, when they see these designs, they’ll say this is the sort of stuff that we want to see in streets and suburbs near us. A discounted price of one dollar per pattern, saving nearly $20,000 over the cost of a custom architecturally designed home and they’ll be looking to get on with that task.

Myles Houlbrook-Walk : Harry Catterns is a partner from Saha Architects, one of the companies which designed one of the new patterns. He explains how it works.

Harry Catterns : So the pattern book is a state initiative to try to improve affordability and accessibility of good design. And so the Government has released a set of pre-designed patterns for terraces, semis, manor houses and townhouses with the idea that they’re available to the public for a low price and if the public chooses to use them, they can achieve a kind of streamlined approval process.

Myles Houlbrook-Walk : But he concedes the patterns won’t work for everyone.

Harry Catterns : Well, I guess there’s a lack of flexibility, you know, for people in some degree because they’re using a pattern. So there might be specific sites that a pattern won’t work on. And also there’s a degree to which you’re stuck with what the architect has decided upon. So, you know, it might not suit everyone but I think it’s a pretty great opportunity for a lot of people.

Myles Houlbrook-Walk : All over the country, the challenges of housing affordability goes well beyond the cost of designing a home. So even if this scheme proved popular, supply will remain a stubborn issue. Data released earlier this month from Cotality shows the cost of a home reached a new national peak and that in every capital city, homes are more expensive than they were a year ago. This week, the ABC revealed that Treasury advised the Federal Government that its 1.2 million homes target would also not be met. Each state and territory government has their own local targets. And when asked if New South Wales was on track to meet theirs, Paul Scully was coy.

Paul Scully : We remain determined to meet that housing target. There’s some challenging macroeconomic conditions that we have to face with interest rates higher than what we’d like to see. But the government continues to make the planning reforms to make the investment in social housing, to look at where its land could be used for housing.

Sabra Lane: That’s New South Wales Planning Minister Paul Scully, and in that report from Myles Houlbrook-Walk and Nicole Johnston.