Extension &
Renovation
Improve your home the way you want.
We design independently, compare quotes, and stay with you through to key handover, ensuring a seamless journey to improve your home.
How it works.
1. COFFEE CATCHUP
Discuss ideas, design options, pricing, and timeframes with your Client Advocate.
2. FIND THE RIGHT SOLUTION
We’ll provide expert designs and advice, liaise with necessary specialists on your behalf, and shortlist, select, and advocate the right builder for you job.
3. BUILD WITH CONFIDENCE
We’ll identify any obstacles, potential issues, and support you every step of the way to build your dream home.
Is renovating the right choice for you?
Sometimes renovating or extending might not be exactly what you need to achieve what you want in the most efficient way. Take our quiz to find out if renovating is the right choice for your situation!
Recent renovation designs
Renovating made easy.
Custom home designed just for you.
We take a detailed brief, ask insightful and intuitive questions to design your perfect home, specifically for your lifestyle and budget. We work with you to uncover your desires, needs and wants, guiding you all the way to a great outcome.
Independent and unbiased advice to give you the best outcomes.
We are independent and unbiased – we reveal what the builders may not. We use out decades of building industry experience and building over a thousand homes to help you understand contracts, anticipate costs, and explore options, empowering you to make the best decisions for your home.
Connect with the best builders for your project.
IBA meticulously chooses the builders it collaborates with, utilising our extensive industry knowledge to select the best. We regularly work with 21 builders who meet our strict 7-point criteria.
Together, we select three builders best aligned to meet your building needs and arrange quotes for comparison.
IBA explained.
Your home with forever in mind.
Building a home is one of the most significant investments you will ever make—but it can also be one of the most overwhelming. With so many decisions, potential pitfalls, and unexpected costs, the process can quickly become stressful, costly, and time-consuming. That’s where we come in.
We essentially work as a builder broker: but we are so much more than just choosing someone to build you any home. We have access to a number of builders, similar to how a finance broker works with various companies to find you the best solution. This strategic positioning allows us to be unbiased with our recommendations, always working in your best interest rather than the builder’s.
Our job is to use our experience and expertise to guide you through the complexities of building a great new home that you’ll love for years to come, without the stress and headaches typically involved.
At Independent Building Advice (IBA), we work with 21 different builders and shortlist the best three for your project. We obtain quotes from these three, compare them, and recommend who we feel is the best. Our clients make the final decision, and we stay with them right through until key handover.
And the best part? It doesn’t cost any more to use IBA than it does to go directly to a builder. See the FAQ below for how this works.
16 common frustrations people experience renovating...
and how to avoid them.
- Engaging an architect who claims to work within your budget, only to receive a builder’s quote that exceeds it by hundreds of thousands.
- Opting for a builder with shaky financial foundations who may go bankrupt during the build or compromise on finishing touches to cut costs.
- Settling for a poor design that lacks functionality, efficient flow, energy efficiency, natural light, adequate ventilation, or is difficult to furnish.
- Dealing with a builder who takes years to complete a home, while others are building similar homes in half the time.
- Suffering from the builder’s inferior workmanship.
- Entering into a cost-plus contract, which can open the door to numerous complications.
- Lacking knowledge to collaborate with a builder to resolve conflicts or issues constructively.
- Overpaying for a home due to the builder’s reputation or because the builder takes advantage of their inexperience to charge exorbitant rates.
- Acting on incorrect recommendations from friends, family, or builder’s sales people leading to repercussions later.
- Being unaware of all the design choices available and later discovering desirable features they wish they had known about earlier.
- Planning for a certain budget, only to be met with escalating costs post contract signing, resulting in a final price well beyond initial expectations.
- Finding the builder difficult and uncooperative.
- Struggling to interpret builders’ plans or understand technical terms, leading to agreements made in good faith that fail to meet their expectations.
- Experiencing stress and concern throughout the building process, uncertain about the correctness of their decisions.
- Underestimating Costs: Homeowners often overlook the need for a contingency budget for unforeseen expenses, which are likely in renovations, potentially causing financial difficulties or incomplete projects.
- Poor communication and a lack of openness from the builder can result in significant frustration and confusion for the client.
Ready to build your dream home?
The IBA way to renovating your new home
#1 – We meet for a coffee to chat about your home and what is involved.
We discuss the process, costs, timeframes, what is involved, share design ideas and how we can make your vision a reality. This is completely complementary with no obligation to proceed past this point.
#2 - We design your home using our panel of designers and architects.
We design your home to be amazing and on budget. We make recommendations with your input. Amending the plans until your satisfied. We will meet you at display homes to help you visualise the design. We guide you to keep on budget throughout this whole process.
#3 – We shortlist the best builders and usually get 2-3 quotes.
We then present the quotes with a comparison spreadsheet that helps compare apples with apples. IBA goes through a thorough process of selecting builders using our industry knowledge. We will only put forward builders we would build with ourselves.
#4 – We stay with you from start to key hand over.
We don’t just hand you over, we stay with you, helping you to avoid problems along your journey. If a problem does arise we are there to help you handle them. 95% of problems that can occur we avoid upfront by designing and advising you properly.
#Bonus - Access builder's discounts through our IBA building partners.
As a value add to building through IBA, we have organised builders discounts on flooring, appliances, air conditioning, robe fit outs and more. You could save 10’s of thousands.
Finding a Builder
How IBA selects our builders
Choosing a builder will either make or break your experience and outcome. For most people finding the right one can be a very difficult task. Big brands have multi-million dollar budgets telling they are the best… but are they? Forums and review sites are unreliable and friends and family can only go on their limited experience with recommendations.
This is why people use IBA as third party unbiased referrers.
With 20 years building industry experience we have an inside knowledge of how a lot of builders really work. We know which ones really care about their clients, which ones over charge because of a their name, the ones that are only about making money, the ones that have no care at all and the ones that want the best for you and will go above and beyond to achieve it. We can see past the millions of dollars spent on marketing, the review sites and Shonky Builder Groups and get to the true heart of the builder.
The people make the builder, and our relationships with builders makes IBA. There is 150 people involved in building a home. This ranges from designers, admins staff, estimators, trades, shire people and more. We look at the leadership of the businesses, who runs the show. Are they good people? Are they passionate about building? What is there relationship with their clients? What do their current clients and past clients say about them? This is information you will not find on their website and only through insight and relationships do we feel comfortable to put them forward.
Building a home is more than price and inclusions (although these are important) this is a home built by humans for passionate clients. We look for the extra services that become really important throughout the process. We look at how the builder communicates. Do they allow you to make changes in construction. Do you get the supervisors direct number, do they have interior designers, what are the home to supervisor ratios, what guarantees do they offer etc. Will they be proactive in helping you have a great outcome or passive. We ask the questions that most people don’t think to ask.
It is important to get value for money. If your budget is fixed then you want to get the best home, inclusions and price for your budget. At the same time, you don’t want low quality. No one will notice your awesome kitchen if you have a 3mm crack down the wall. Being on a tight budget doesn’t mean you have to have low quality. It means you need a builder that has the right balance of inclusions, workmanship, service and price. We put forward the right builder for the right project. To come in on budget but also deliver a great home.
CLIENT STORIES
People we have helped build their home.
Oscar and Celeste
Ardross
Independent Building Advice gave us a perfect house design after having unsuccessfully engaged with 3 top building companies that failed to listen to our needs and produced a design that lacked practicality.
We also saved time in the process as Behan came to our home to work with us on the design rather than us having to book time with the ‘top’ builders who were time poor and did not offer up the same practical expertise.
We are so happy with IBA and Behan and hope you make the right decision and call him too, just like we did.
Angus and Liz
Stirling
Behan has been an invaluable asset to building our new home here in Perth, WA. IBA was the answer to our prayers after months of searching through display homes, project builders and sales calls.
I would recommend him to anyone looking for a helping hand starting their own home building journey.
Stuart and Fiona
Waterford
Doing your first home build is a daunting prospect that you want to get right. Behan has made our first stage of this process so easy and enjoyable and I have full confidence going ahead.
It’s all about having someone who knows the industry to avoid making the mistakes. Great advice to ensure we get a home that suits us, for the price we want in a timely way.
FAQ.
Commonly asked questions by people like you
Have a different question?
Get in touch!
A builder will give you biased advice on how they do things.
A builder’s sales people are not always the most reliable for information.
If the builder designs your home they own the copyright.
We work for you not the builder so the advice we give is in your best interest.
IBA can compare different builder so you get a clear comparison.
We looks for-
Financially secure
Build a good home.
Well priced.
Have decent build times.
Proactive in fixing problems.
Great service and communication.
This really depends on your job. Happy to quote you over the phone.
Design costs range from $0-3000 with Fly Throughs being extra.
Our builder “shortlist and tender” process is a free service.
Reach out for a fixed quote.
Anywhere within a 100km of Perth and the South West.
No problems, see our third party advisor service.
We sure do, see our building inspections part of this website.
We have a panel of designers and architects that we use regularly. We will select the right one for your home project. Our process is we catch up with you and create a good design brief and guide you but the home is designed by specialists who make sure it looks amazing and compliant.
Email, text or call us with your question and we see how we can assist.
GET IN TOUCH
Tell us your story!
Let's work together on your new home build or renovation.
Email: info@buildingadvice.au
Phone: +61 0430 016 929
Visit us: Home Base Subiaco WA