Don't Build, relocate! Removal houses great for environment and your bottom line

Moved in: From left,  owner Mark Annandale  with Leon Wanambi and Freddy Herrera who are helping get the house ready to live in.  

How the little house was transported to its new “home”.

Mark Annandale is part of a growing trend of house hunters snapping up charming relocatable homes and moving them to new blocks to beat rising building costs and property prices.

But his budget is not the only thing that will benefit from recycling the quaint 1920s Queenslander to the new estate just off  Woombye-Palmwoods Road, Woombye. The move will also pay dividends for the environment. 

“My work is about environmental sustainability and this is the ultimate recycling,” Mark said. “This is a way to walk the talk. I’ve built a few house out of speciality recycled timber from Cape York, but the theme for this one is going to be ‘recycled’.

“The house was $80,000 and it will be about double that to make it habitable. That means fully rewired, fully replumbed, a new bathroom, a new kitchen and a lick of paint. 

“I’ve done my homework and to build the equivalent here would have costed $300-$350,000. So it’s a no-brainer really,” he said.  

Queensland House Removers boss John Wright said his company was the busiest it had been in 40 years, relocating about three houses a week.

He shipped Marks’ little house from a development site in Anstead to the  Woombye block.  

The cost includes delivery and stumping. “Council approvals, site connections and renovations are the main extra works,” John said. “Still, on a like for like basis you should finish a removal home for between half and two thirds of the cost of equivalent new build.”

Mr Wright said many people loved the challenge of renovating their own character home that couldn’t be replicated. He said  it was often possible to raise the house and double the space with a ground  floor. “It costs $25,000 to raise a relocatable house to legal height for it to be built in underneath.

“Just  talk to us,” he said. “We sell on average two to three quality homes a week. Currently we are generally booked out three to six months in advance. Our biggest barriers to potential clients are that banks don’t lend on removal homes because they are considered uninhabitable. Also some Councils charge exorbitant performance bonds.”