On the appeal, and the arithmetic, of starting from an empty plot on a coast where finished houses are scarce.
When the houses you want don’t exist, the remaining option is to make one. It’s the longest route to living somewhere and, for a particular kind of buyer, the only one that ends in the right house.
The appeal is obvious: orientation chosen rather than inherited, rooms sized to a life rather than to a previous owner’s. The arithmetic is less obvious, and it’s where most projects come unstuck.
Permission is the whole timeline
On protected coast the constraint is almost never construction. It’s consent. Setbacks, height limits, tree protections, and heritage overlays can take longer to resolve than the build itself, and they’re the reason a plot is affordable in the first place.
Our advice is to price the delay before pricing the house. A plot that will take two years to permit and eighteen months to build is a four-year commitment, and that number, not the cost per square metre, is what decides whether it’s the right decision.
