Accommodation requirements and costs

Considering your accommodation requirements, we need to sub-divide these into the different categories, ensuring that all the elements are covered. It is so often found that people only tend to concentrate on roof-covered areas and completely forget about the other important facilities.

I found that the accommodation requirement categories as stated below provide a very practical and holistic checklist.

The book Plan Your Dream Home has a very comprehensive calculation schedule covering every possibility regarding homes.

Roof-covered areas

The accommodation requirements regarding roof-covered areas are determined by first indicating the internal dimensions of each room and multiplying these to obtain the floor area of each of these spaces.

Then you need to add the entire roof covered floor areas and multiply the answer with say 1.23 to obtain the total area of the house (this calculation allows for the area of walls, passages and staircases).

Now you can calculate the estimated cost by multiplying your answer with the going building cost rate in your area.

The home loan divisions of banks normally provide a very good indication of the going building cost rates in your region. It is worthwhile trying their websites. You could also enquire with a bond expert for leads in this regard. These costs should include all construction costs regarding interior spaces, all-risk contractors’ insurance and other preliminaries, such as site establishment, etc.

Open patio areas

Open patio areas are also regarded as accommodation requirements. Add all the open patio areas that are finished in high quality floor coverings and calculate the estimated cost for these areas at around 15% of the going building cost rate in your area.

Garden areas

Although this might sound rather funny, a garden area is just as an accommodation requirement as any other part of your house, but is for some reason mostly not included, especially at this stage. Add all the garden areas and calculate the estimated cost for these. An indication of cost could be obtained from your local nursery or garden contractor.

We found that, depending on your garden requirements, this could normally be in the order of 4 to 10 percent of the building and land cost.

Paved areas

Add all the paved areas also allowing a provisional quantity for the driveway leading to the garages and calculate the estimated cost for these.

The allowance for the driveway can at this stage be estimated by multiplying the floor area of garages by 1,5.

Obtain an indication of the cost rate from your local paving contractor.

Special features and facilities

The special features and facilities are those items that are not normally considered being part of standard house construction. These features and facilities should be subdivided into internal and external facilities. Obtain an indication of costs from your local suppliers and specialist contractors regarding these extra facilities that you require.

Interior design and decorating

Even though it is probably the one item that could make or break the livability of your new home, interior design and decorating is very often forgotten during the planning of new homes, resulting that it cannot be afforded for some years to come and that building elements are not designed to accommodate certain interior ideas.

Make a generous financial allowance for interior design and decorating in your budgeted costs. This allowance will depend on the theme of your dream home, personal taste and the level to which existing furniture and equipment will be used.

In average you should allow in the order of 7,5% when starting from scratch and at least 4% when starting with a fair level of existing furniture, of the budgeted cost related to all roof-covered areas.

You should also distinguish between fixed and loose interior items. The fixed items can eventually be included as part of a building contract and be financed by the home loan, whereas loose interior items will normally require a different source of funding and are mostly provided after practical completion of a building contract.

A summary of the accommodation requirements costs will be included in Part 6 of the course.

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