I bought a house-plus-two-unit site in Waterview for $88,000. The existing house sat at the front of the section, which meant it already had its own street access — nothing needed to be engineered to separate it from the rest of the site. That let me create two standalone sections behind it: a 2-bedroom and a 3-bedroom townhouse, each with its own carport, built for $75,000 and $85,000 respectively.
The other thing that made this site easy was underground, not visible from the street: stormwater and wastewater manholes were already on site. Connecting services to two new dwellings is often where a subdivision's civil costs blow out — here it was straightforward, because the infrastructure was already sitting there waiting to be used.
The existing house itself needed only a light touch — about $5,000 on interior presentation — because it was already in good condition. Legals across the whole project ran to $10,000.
The numbers
| Purchase (whole site) | −$88,000 |
| Existing house — interior touch-up | −$5,000 |
| Legals | −$10,000 |
| Construction — 2-bedroom | −$75,000 |
| Construction — 3-bedroom | −$85,000 |
| Sell existing house | +$86,000 |
| Sell 2-bedroom | +$105,000 |
| Sell 3-bedroom | +$115,000 |
| Net result | +$43,000 |
Three separate sales from one purchase, a real margin, and none of the site itself fighting me along the way. That's the difference a well-configured site makes over one where every dollar has to be argued for.
This was also the third site I'd bought from the same agent. By this point the relationship had shifted from him simply selling me what came up — he was actively hunting out sites that matched my criteria before they were advertised. That's the return on the trust built at Alberta Ave: a source who understood exactly what I was looking for, and had started looking for it on my behalf.