Being an inexperienced and naive owner builder, I was not very successful with budgeting for our build. I did draw up an extensive spreadsheet and populated it with prices I found online but in practice, I had missed many small details that added up sign ...
It's becoming more common for people to put up container homes in South Africa. They can be done quite quickly and with fewer external resources. There are even a few in Baardskeerdersbos. We really like that industrial aesthetic of these sorts of homes ...
As owner builders who are turning every penny to squeeze the most beautiful building out of our modest budget that we possibly can, unexpected large costs that were not included in the initial budget, come as a terrible knock each time. I fattened the planned budget by 20% to account for these sorts of things but that age-old concept of a building project costing double what one budgets for, rings true when one encounters these pit fall payments.
I am sure that we haven't seen the end of these nasty bills yet so this post will be updated as I discover more of the costs that we didn't factor in when embarking on this project. So far, I will cover title deeds registration fees, building approval submission fee at the municipal office, geological survey fees, conservancy tank test fees. I hope that by writing about these things, other new owner builders building their own homes for the first time will avoid these horrors and make sure to account for what is to come.
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There was nothing straight forward about applying for Owner Builder exemption from the NHBRC. In the end I did receive it without a hitch but if I had known then what I know now, the process might have gone differently. If you want to build your own house in South Africa and are actually capable of doing so (this is the key factor) you can request to be exempt from the obligatory quality control procedures governed by the National Home Builders Registration Council.
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The below text is copied from another document found here.
How do I become an owner builder?
the nhbrc and you
I have decided to summarize again what the answer entails and document it. My disclaimer is that it is my interpretation and built on my experience as someone who had to go through the process, so pardon any bias - I take no responsibility or credit at all for anyconsequences of this writ.
Little over a year ago we bought a property in Baardskeerdersbos, Overstrand, Western Cape, South Africa. We intend building a house on our little slice of heaven. In fact, I thought that we would already be living in our house and yet we are still waiting for approval on our plans from our local municipality (update 14.01.2022 : we received our planning approval on the 9th of December 2021 - one week before builder's holiday unfortunately). We have learned so much in the last year that I thought it a shame not to share this information with people. I have decided to start a blog not only to recount what I have learned thus far but also to document what we do going forward. First of all, I want to fill in a bit of background and context to our project and who we are.
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