How Long Will It Take to Build my New Home or Home Renovation in Perth, Western Australia

A short while ago you could build a new home in under 6 months from start to finish..... Believe it or not!
Now that seems crazy given the timing right now for most builds here in Perth.
 
But why are we experiencing massive delays and why is it taking much longer to build a home or home renovations?
 
There is an industry wide issue that is not only affecting Perth, Western Australia but furthermore is reaching the whole of Australia.   There is even talk of construction industries in other parts of the world suffering from huge delays also.
 
While the pandemic bought about massive boosts to our industry it has caused a negative knock-on effect that is causing grief and stress amongst all builders and trades alike.
 
There are three reasons for these delays which I will delve into more.
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 Availability of Raw Materials 
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Since COVID hit all industries have been experiencing delays in raw materials this is due to factories and shipping companies all over the world closing because of forced lock downs. These lock downs caused a back log of production and transportation.

With these back logs of transportation and production also came an increase in demand for a lot of those materials.

This demand was a result of more and more people saving up money from government stimulus or pay if they were lucky enough to continue to work. Also, people were not going out to spend their money so more and more things were brought online, and more and more demand occurred across a range of industries.

In Australia construction never closed and is still operating now despite recent COVID outbreaks. The construction industry was one of those industries that picked up because of government stimulus and due to more and more people spending a lot of time in their home, saving their money instead of spending it. This made home owners realise they wanted/needed to update their home via renovations or selling and upgrading.

This has caused a huge demand on timber, steel, concrete, and other building materials. This demand coupled with the above back log in raw materials and transportation is one of the reasons we are seeing delays on site.

For example, we must order our timber deliveries three weeks in advance, and even that is not guaranteed! It used to be a couple of days out.  So this is the first reason….

Trade Availability

The next reason and probably the biggest issue is not being able to book in trades for the job. In Perth we had being experiencing a downturn in the construction industry pre COVID.

Most our good quality trades were sick of not getting enough work and landed themselves a FIFO job in the mines or got the next plane out of WA and headed over east to find more work.
 
This mass exodus of tradies from Perth, has now created a headache as we head into the biggest construction boom WA has seen on a long while! Adding to this issue is the fact that the borders in WA are tightly monitored and closed at the slightest hint of a COVID case from over east. While this is protecting us all in our WA bubble it is not helping the massive issues builders are having on sites around Western Australia. 

To make matters even worse, as I write this we are going through a period of rain like no other. We have had nonstop rain for the past two and half weeks. Western Australia has not seen this much rain fall for 20 years!
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Talk about tradie back log! Builders are becoming stressed trying to deal with expectations of timing on the homeowner’s part and the terrible shortage of tradesman on site. 

Price Increases
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The third reason which is rather and indirect reason, is the increase of prices from suppliers and trades. Builders are now having to shop around more than they ever had to, to try and get the right price for their materials and tradesman.
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Or on the other hand a lot of builders will wait for the right tradie to be available based on quality of work and price. Some builders have trusted trades they worked with, for several years and those trades are not increasing their prices and staying loyal to their regular builders. However, that same tradesman is in high demand and in order to get the said tradesmen on site the builder must wait,  therefore the longer delays on site. 

Conclusion
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So, I have not actually answered the number one question, that is, how long are builds taking now days?

At Distinct Renovations we are allowing 50% more time in our contracts to ensure we cover any delays for the above reasons of materials and trades shortages as well as unnecessary price increases.

As an example, a ground floor 70m2 home extension consisting of a laundry, bathroom and kitchen/ living/dining area would normally take us 6 months to build from start to practical completion. Post COVID we are now however allowing 9 months to ensure we are covering all delays.
 
Unfortunately it is unknown when these delays will slow down, the building starts have slowed, and the state government are well aware of the industry conundrum, and they are in the stages of putting together a plan mainly for the trade shortages.

We are all hoping that 2022 will be a much smoother year for our industry and these unwanted delays will decrease.

If you are thinking of renovating or building a new home soon, feel free to reach out to us at Distinct Renovations, we are happy to answer your questions and help guide you through the full design through to build stages.

Contact us now for more.