There’s many reasons why Dual Occupancies are a great option when building new homes. First, a brief outline of what Dual Occupancy is...
A Dual Occupancy development involves building two houses on a single residential block of land. The houses may be detached, but are typically attached dwellings. Each home is usually separated by a common wall (the party wall), typically side by side but could also be front and back. They may alternately be located in a two storey arrangement above and below each other.
The advantages of Dual Occupancy
Dual Occupancy housing is suitable for a broad range of residents and easily designed with some flexibility to the accomodation of future residents. We’ve listed below some of the areas of opportunity Dual Occupancies present.
Dual occupancy homes offer many savings over free standing homes. Building two houses on a single block of land halves land cost per dwelling. Two attached dwellings can be more efficient to build, they have typically compact footprints and planning, and there are efficiencies of scale.
There are many areas where Dual Occupancy dwellings can be built across Sydney. The building approval required in these areas ranges from the standard Development Applications (DA) to the Local Council, to Complying Development Consent (CDC). CDC’s allow for Approval by a Private Certifier (not Council) where the proposal meets the requirements of the Low Rise Medium Density SEPP. It is advantageous to build with a CDC as the approvals process is significantly faster to that of a DA. There is also greater certainty in knowing that the design proposed will be approved, not subject to changes required by Council.
Opportunities abound for…
Families
Kids now grown up with their own family, wanting their ageing parents to live closer by. Parents helping the kids out in the scary jungle of Sydney Real Estate. Siblings maintaining the bonds of childhood and living as neighbours. Families whose tradition is to have all generations close by if not in the same building.
Downsizing
Family moved out, house is too big but don’t want to move out of the area. A dual occupancy may be the way to go. Build a new dual occ on your block, with a second home as an asset or for family as above.
Asset Realisation
Changes to zoning and local Council planning controls land can create uplift on the value of the land. This uplift is die to an increase in the development potential for the block of land. In this example, land zoning now allows a dual occupancy development on a site that currently has only a single dwelling. This presents the opportunity to construct a dual occupancy development, with the owners retaining one new home while renting or selling the second home. Alternately, both new dwellings could be sold or rented.
Co-Housing
Friends or acquaintances pooling resources to build paired homes. This may be to do so more cheaply than they may be able to if they were to buy their own block and build from scratch. It may also be to create a non-conventional housing arrangement.
We've spent some time exploring all these ideas and we're currently developing some economical designs to cater to all manner of configurations in a delightful way.
Please drop us a line us if any of this interests you. We'd be very happy to have a chat.
There’s also some additional information in these recent posts, we've come across: