How Much Does It Cost to Demolish a House in Australia?

When you live at an ideal location but with a not-so-good house, rebuilding your current land is a perfect option. Recently , a third of all house builds fall in this group – the House Institute of Australia states that rebuilding your house is a good choice due to land scarcity. But if your rebuilding your house, you will be looking into the knock-down procedure first.

Rebuilding deals with multiple interrelated issues which are connected with the overall demolish procedures, costing laws, etc. This comprises of researching the cost you have to bear when demolishing a house and getting a suitable contractor.

In this post, we are going to outline what factors are going to have an impact on the demolition and what will be the actual cost in dollars.

Understanding the Demolition Process

When you go to sign on the demolition dotted line, it’s a perfect idea to familiarise yourself with the overall procedure of the demolition. Your chosen supplier should be offering you everything that helps to handle everything for you in the course of demolition process. Or there will be some areas you need to take care of yourself.

Demolition Permits

People often ask, ‘Do they require a permit before going for a demolish process?’ Yes, definitely, you’ll need complete paperwork in place before beginning any work. This may comprise of working with any private certifier, housing forms and of course in regards to a fee you have to pay. This procedure may take a few weeks, so it’s very significant to factor it in the overall timeline of the procedure. Most significantly, you’ll require to examine whether there are any heritage boundaries on destruction or removal of trees.

Services Disconnection

After getting the demolition permit, your contractor will be calling for the disconnection of the service. Your contractor cannot start the demolition unless all services have been disconnected. So you should be in contact regarding these issues with your contractor. Normally, you’ll go for disconnection of all your utility services like electricity, gas, telecommunications and water/sewer before getting started the demolition of your house. However, you should check whether your contractor requires water for any asbestos elimination first. If you will not take so long following the demolition, your electricity provider can move your service to a transitory builder’s pole as well.

Baiting

Baiting is a related to the local council obligation for your home to be pulled for rodents in a few days or weeks, leading up to your house destruction. The objective of the process is to stop any pest’s dispersal to your neighbours’ houses.

Choosing a Demolition Contractor

You can ask your builder to get you a demolition contractor, but if not, it’s significant to select a demolition company yourself, that has all the required licences, latest equipment, proven procedures, and to know the site of disposing or recycling all your building wreckage.

How Long Does It Take to Demolish a House?

Your contractor will do the physical act of knocking down the current building quite fast. In some situations, it may take a day or two. But you will have to give them around 2 months to walk through the complete procedure, which requires to be influenced into the overall building project plan. Most significantly, once the demolition of your house is completed, then your site is prepared for the most thrilling step: the building of your dream home.

What factors may determine the cost of demolition?

You should know that there are some factors that can have an impact on the total cost of any demolition segment job may be regarding the size of the property. The demolition cost is associated with the size of the house or its structure as well. Bigger houses require extra labour as well as extra tools and machinery as compared to smaller demolitions. Furthermore, if you’re hiring experts to do the work, several contractors’ charge you by the square metre, therefore the size of the construction can be very vital in defining the job’s total cost.

What is being demolished?

What is being demolished is very important. Whether you go for total or partial demolition, and whether your house demolition is in regards to the interior or exterior, size is important because why not? Size always matters. This will define the way of demolition necessary and have an impact on the total cost of the job. For instance, companies guessed that the destruction of an inside non-load-bearing fence might set you back at least $1,500.

On the contrary, it is estimated that a load-bearing, or significant structure might cost a maximum of $5,000 to demolish. It is very important to remove other structures like parking sheds, playing courts etc. very carefully. Your contractor should also check for possible hurdles while inspecting your home. It may include some trees and shrubs that can cause some difficulties, on the arrival of heavy machinery. It may also add to the cost of your demolition.

What material is the house made of?

You should know that this is a very important factor in determining the overall cost of the demolition process. Because your contractor will have to evaluate what tools will be required for demolishing your house and how much time is required. This is how they will decide the overall charge of the job. Your contractor also may help you in saving your money. Let’s say, you got a timber house recently and it can be completely demolished for roughly about $10,000. If you timber can be reused and salvaged by using certain tactics, it may save you some money and the same timber can be used for rebuilding or renovation purposes.

On the contrary, concrete, bricks and cement, are normally extra expensive materials when contractors go for demolishing, as they need some very heavy machinery tools and equipment, like a jackhammer. It may consume some time as well to bring these types of machinery to the site. Your contractor can also help you to recycle existing concrete in the following development process.

Is your property accessible?

You will have to make sure that your areas and property is accessible for your contractor. Because it is a very important factor for contractors and service providers to give you a quote. The site’s gradient and entry points are always very important. Your contractor also has to see regarding the transport cost, tools and equipment. The longer the distance from your place, the more expensive the quote provided by the contractor.

How much does it cost to demolish a house in Sydney?

You cannot quote the definitive price point for bringing down a house in Sydney. Though, there can be an option of stating an average cost or the price range. According to some recent statistics, the average price of demolishing a house in Sydney ranges from $10,000 to $80,000. This may vary depending on additional material and potential asbestos found on the premises.

If you want a breakdown, the majority of the contractors and companies may charge you an average of $70-$80 per hour. For smaller demolition jobs, the price can also be like $45-$50 per hour, but for huge and gigantic complex demolition jobs, it might be a higher cost and go up to $90 per hour. It can also be evaluated as per square feet; the regular cost may range from $2 to $12 per square feet. In the case of Sydney, get ready to pay an average of $17,000 for a 1500 sq. feet house. Normally, the price will decrease as the square footage rises, but the price may shoot up on extra work on the location.

You should know that the most professional demolition contractors first visit the site before giving you any quote and do not give you the quote just based on the size of the house alone.

Hazardous Materials: Cost to Demolish

Following the demolishing process, the removal of hazardous materials is very important for the neighbourhood. It is very important how you demolish a house with asbestos or mould, and what is the cost to demolish any structure with asbestos or mould?

Bear in mind the removal and disposal of any hazardous materials, may add to the cost of your demolition. This is due to the addition of precautions, requirements and threats that this will probably involve for the contractor. Different materials like mould, mineral fibres and asbestos are all included in the hazardous materials according to the Australian law. It needs some expensive equipment’s to manage the overall hazardous material. As per Australian law, there are lots of safety equipment and pre requisites when dealing with such hazardous materials. Elimination and clearance of asbestos have to be completed by a qualified professional because existing Work Health and Safety Regulations have already mentioned that it cannot be handled without proper certification and training as well as licence. Removal of mould is not very cheap these days and it also needs some specialist treatment during building demolition.

If your house was built between 1930 and 1980, there’s a good possibility that asbestos was utilised in the building. As far as the demolition services charges in New South Wales (Sydney) and Victoria (Melbourne) are concerned, the price is pretty much the same and it is about $75/hr. while in the case of the Queensland (Brisbane), it may cost up to an average price of about $88/hr. Meanwhile, peoples in Western Australia (Perth) have to pay around $55/hr for normal demolition work.

Manual Deconstruction and Cost

You must know that Manual deconstruction helps to control the cost. Manual deconstruction characteristically deals with the identification of all salvageable and recyclable kinds of material found in the construction before demolition starts. These salvageable and recyclable materials are then removed separately and then recycled and used or even sold thus help to control the price. All the process has been done to reduce waste. According to, various Australian-based sustainable demolition companies, this way creates significantly less landfill than demolition and believed to be an eco-friendly choice.

Keep in mind, time is the most significant when any demolition project is carried out by a contractor. Your contractor will be telling you the worth of all the salvage items in your building and they usually balance this against the quote. The costs can be reduced more if there is the possibility to recycle or dispose of non-toxic waste material.

So as you can see, the time your contractor will be taking depends on the type of demolition works and the scale and difficulty of the house. The demolition task may typically take three eight working days. If your house is a semi-detached or terraced based for example, the connecting buildings will need some support steps following this demolition, and this may add some cost to your project as well.