Underneath every other question is this one: is this house worth the money, or would the same spend buy a better house three suburbs over? It deserves a proper answer rather than a feeling.
Renovate or knock down and rebuild in Brisbane — or sell and move altogether. You've probably run a version of this late at night on a real estate app. The house three suburbs over with the flat block and the north-facing back, for roughly what this one would cost to fix. Then you closed the app, because moving felt like giving up on the house you chose.
It isn't giving up. It's one of two reasonable answers, and it's worth working out rather than feeling out. The complication is that almost everyone you'd ask has a stake in the outcome — the agent earns on the sale, the builder on the build, and I earn on the renovation.
So do the sum first, then bring it to someone. It's the most valuable thinking in the whole project.
Sometimes the answer is move, other times there's a design solution to be found together.
This is a financial question with a design input, and it is genuinely answerable. What the site allows, what the overlay permits, what an addition would cost, and what the finished house would be worth against comparable sales. A defensible answer here is worth more than any design decision that follows.
Either permission to stop or conviction to start, and both are good outcomes. What you really get is the ability to go forward without a private doubt running underneath, which makes every later decision easier to live with.
The decision gets made on feel, or on advice from someone with an interest in the answer. Where the choice is clear-cut that's often fine. Where the sums are close, you're carrying the arithmetic on your own.
I'm one of the very few people in this conversation with nothing riding on your answer. The agent earns on a sale, the builder on a build — I lose nothing by telling you this house isn't worth the money, or that the same spend buys better three suburbs over. So I'll do the sum with you before either of us commits to anything: what your block allows, what the overlay permits, what the finished house would be worth.
It turns almost entirely on whether you're allowed to demolish, which on a pre-1947 house in the inner suburbs is often the whole question. Many Brisbane character suburbs sit inside a demolition control precinct or a character overlay, and removing a pre-1947 house needs council's permission and frequently doesn't get it. Reading the overlays comes first, and that's my job rather than yours.
More than most expect, and none of it buys you any building. Transfer duty, agent commission, marketing, conveyancing on both sides, building and pest, mortgage fees, removalists. Add those up and you have the bid your renovation has to beat. The Queensland Revenue Office publishes a duty calculator that does the hardest part for you.
Less reliably than people hope, and the figure that matters isn't the citywide average — it's your street. What renovated houses near you have actually sold for, on similar land with a similar aspect, is your realistic ceiling. Going above it can still be exactly right if you intend to stay a long time. It should just be a decision you make rather than one you discover.
Structurally, more often than you'd fear. Hardwood frames from that era are usually sound, the services are accessible because you can get underneath, and raising and building under is a move Brisbane builders know well. What makes a house not worth it is usually the site rather than the building: a block that falls the wrong way, a poor flood level, living space hard against the western boundary.
Worth naming out loud: the agent is paid on the sale, the builder on the build, and I'm paid on the renovation. A quantity surveyor and a valuer have no stake in which way it goes, and their fees are small against a decision this size. Beyond that, ask each of us to argue against our own interest.
If you would rather start small, the First Sketch Session is two hours at your place. You keep the sketches, and there is no obligation afterwards.
