On one thing we can all agree: Australia’s housing market is FUCKED (It’s now the second worst housing cost : income ratio on the planet, just beaten by Hong Kong).
The average price of property in Sydney hit $1 million last year (that’s 12.2 times the middle income house’s annual income), and it’s not much better in Melbourne and every other capital city – unless you move wayyyyyy out – leaving a lot of us high and dry in undesirable living situations.
Maybe your mum gets all emotional when you and your mates are racking up on her antique dining room table at 4:10 am, or your dad cheers from the room next door when you finally break the sex-drought, or your flat mates are generally mental – whatever it is, you’d probably bloody love a place of your own…without a 30 year mortgage.
GOOD NEWS. You don’t need to move to a commune, partner swap and embrace a diet of lentils to bypass the bullshit cost of buying property in Australia; from Japan to Auckland, more and more people are wising up to recycling shipping containers into affordable, unique and pretty damn sweet micro homes.
THIS COULD BE YOU ^^^^
Whether it’s located in your parents’/rich mates backyard or on a piece of land you tricked someone into renting to you, residential independence doesn’t get much better or cheaper than a shipping container conversion.
Behold a list of cheeky hacks to get you shacked up in your own custom designed pad for under $20K, without having to wait months for local council development approvals.
Go on, fuck Australia’s impossible housing market right in the mouth.
1) GET APPROVAL
The trick with this is going through your state government’s laws. This is shitloads easier than going through local council and as state laws over ride local-you don’t need local approval (which can take many months) and get a green light within 10 days or so.
The NSW State Government saw the housing situation going from bad to shithouse back in 2009 and set up some secondary dwelling/granny flat legislation- they wanted to make housing more affordable and creatively named it “Affordable Rental Housing”. All the details are HERE.
But the main things to qualify for this sneaky approval are you just need to make sure your new pad is under 60m2 internal (the largest container is 40 ft and has a 28m2 floor- so you’ll be fine with even 2 of these bad boys) and the land must be larger than 450m2 and have a primary property (a house on a block…) Think the backyard of anyone who loves you, or even the backyard of the toothless bloke next door who you could ply with Tooheys OLD.
2) PLAN YOUR CRIB
Design what you want or buy plans off the net, somewhere like Premier Shipping Containers, Port Shipping Containers or Container Home. You’ll need to submit these to a public or private certifier (someone who’ll take a few hundred bucks out of your pocket but allow you to submit and get 10 day approval).
3) BUY, BUY, BUY
If you want to eco-warrior it right up and you’ve got more time than cash, go local and buy your materials on sites like Gumtree – classifieds are a treasure trove of cheap buys from people doing renos and selling off old windows, doors, lights etc. You can even get shipping containers for next to nothing.
OI MUM AND DAD, GIVE US SOME LAND?
4) GET GROUNDED
Work out your plumbing and put in your footings. These are basically concrete pillars in the ground or a full concrete slab (just get your plumber mate to do his work FIRST). You could also have stainless or galvanised legs built on the container, which will stop water/rust getting into the main chassis. That way, if your folks / the landowner starts shitting you to tears, you can simply pack up (onto a semi-trailer) and piss off.
5) DO THE SET-UP
Getting your containers home can mean craning, removing fences, you name it – some people pre-fab the container off-site, but that means loading it on and off a truck twice, which burns through your budget. Best do it in the backyard it’s going to call home.
WOULDN’T SAY NO.
6) THE FINAL TOUCHES
Use something like a plasma-cutter to cut holes out for windows and doors, then seal up the walls and roof with plywood (for some insulation) and to give it a nice cabin feel. To combat the heat in summer, a lot of people create a garden on the roof as an insulator / source of fresh herbs and self indulgent social media pics. Then it’s a matter of getting a sparky mate to connect up some lights and slinging a plumber mate a few slabs of beer to get a sink tap/toilet connected up.
All in all: pour as much time and cash into it as you like but, in it’s most basic form, this is a way to own a studio apartment at the cost of $20k and a few months’ work.
Photos: Supplied / Port Shipping Containers / Brett Boardman Photography / Andres Garcia Lochner for Benjamin Garcia Saxe.
