The House That Needed the Least: Buying a Family Home in Yarraville

A young family, a firm ceiling on price, and a buyer's advocate sending listings faster than they could judge them. We wrote them a Confidence to Buy report on a house in Yarraville that wasn't the kind of house they'd asked for. We recommended they buy it anyway.

Victoria and Gavin were looking for a long-term family home in Melbourne's inner west, anywhere from Kingsville down to Newport, Yarraville included. They had a buyer's advocate, and around Christmas she started sending them off-market houses faster than they could work out what any of them would really cost to live in.

That was the gap we filled. Their advocate could tell them about price, condition and the market. What they couldn't tell from a listing was whether a floor plan that almost worked could be made to work, and for how much.

A brief before a house

We started the way we start a design project, with a briefing session rather than a property.

They wanted a standalone house, not a townhouse, and not on a main road. It needed three genuine bedrooms, plus a space or two that could be a study, a playroom or a second living area as the kids grew. They asked for good natural light and lots of storage. They wanted somewhere to stay for twenty years.

They also had a hard ceiling on price, and with two young children at home they had little appetite for building work. One or two contained jobs were fine. A whole-house renovation was not.

With that written down, any floor plan they sent through could be judged against something. Some got a quick reply. The ones worth it got a full report.

The house in Yarraville

On paper this one wasn't what they'd briefed. They'd asked for strong bones and room to adapt over time, which usually points to an older house. This was a 2000s house on an east–west block of about 445 m².

What it had instead were the things that are hardest to add later. It was already insulated and double glazed, and it had solar. That makes a house quieter, more comfortable and cheaper to run every day, and it's expensive and disruptive to retrofit. The layout suited a young family too: a playroom next to the main living area, and two separate studies.

The report was just as plain about what didn't work:

• The living and dining areas were small for how this family actually uses them.
• There was no room for stools at the kitchen island, so no spot for quick breakfasts, snacks or homework while someone cooks.
• The pantry was sized for a much more minimal household.
• There was no bath.
• The kids' bedrooms were at the opposite end of the house from the main bedroom. That will suit them later, but it's harder while the children are small.
• The backyard was modest, with a drainage easement across the rear and tight site access. A pool or a backyard studio was never going to happen.

The price guide also sat at the very top of their range. Whatever we recommended had to be small, cheap, and possible to do in stages.

Four small changes

1. Take out the non-structural wall between the living room and the retreat beside it, and turn the retreat into a dining room. This was the most useful change on the list. It gives the family more room where they spend most of their time without touching the kitchen or a bathroom. The doorway from the study into that room can then be filled with joinery.
2. Swap the shower in the kids' bathroom for a freestanding bath, ideally reusing the existing waste and disturbing as few tiles as possible.
3. Replace the pantry with joinery designed for a family's groceries.
4. Make a movable breakfast bar that sits over the existing island, so there's bar seating again without rebuilding the kitchen.

We put the first three at $15,000–35,000 all up. That's an indicative construction cost only; authority and consultant fees, contingency and GST sit on top. Little of it was essential, and all of it could be staged as money allowed.

What we recommended

The report's conclusion was that this was a low-risk purchase that met the brief in substance rather than spectacle. Plenty of houses present well and then need serious hidden money to work properly. This one didn't.

We also told them not to rely on the agent's floor plan. Some of its dimensions looked doubtful, so we suggested checking the key measurements, especially in the bathroom and the children's bedroom, and getting a building and pest inspection before going further.

What happened next

They bought it, and two of the four changes are done. The wall came out, and that room is now their dining room.

We designed ironbark joinery to fill the original doorway. It still lets light through into the dining room via reeded glass, and on the other side it gives the parents' end of the house a small library.

In the laundry, which doubles as the walk-in pantry, the new joinery is clay-coloured cabinets with an ironbark feature to complement, rather than match, the existing joinery. Both are installed.

Thinking about buying? Here's how Confidence to Buy works, with a full example report you can read before you book.