Brochures & Resources

The great news is that, generally, if you can afford to rent, you can afford a new home! Buy a great value House and Land with loads of luxury inclusions and choose from our single storey home designs, two storey home designs, split level home designs and our luxury acreage homes. With our finance offer through MyChoice Home Loans, McDonald Jones will also pay your interest up to $12,000 while you build your new home*. As one of the leading home building companies in Australia, we make it easy to get started. Check out our display homes and begin your journey now.

We also provide a range of calculators that cover everything from savings, loan repayments, stamp duty, home loan comparisons and more. Choose the calculator you need from the links below.

• Borrowing Power
• Budget Planner
• Extra Repayments
• How Long to Repay
• Loan Comparison
• Loan Repayments
• Lump Sum
• Savings
• Stamp Duty

*IMPORTANT NOTICE: Available to approved applicants of MyChoice Home Loans Pty Ltd only. Approved applicants must enter into a construction home loan and an Interest Subsidy Agreement with Mortgageport Management Pty Ltd (Manager). Offer is not available on the land portion of the construction home loan. Eligibility criteria, fees, charges and T&Cs apply. MyChoice Home Loans Pty Limited ACN 610 250 578 is an authorised Credit Representative (Number 485273) of Mortgageport Management Pty Ltd ACN 082 753 679 Australian Credit Licence 386360. This offer is only available when building a home with NSW: Newcastle Quality Constructions Pty Ltd ABN 82 003 687 232 – NSW: BLN 41628. T/A McDonald Jones Homes. ACT: McDonald Jones Homes (Canberra) Pty Ltd ABN 64 150 533 298 - ACT BLN: 20121296. Not available for bridging finance. Construction requirements apply, which include a requirement that funds are to be retained by the lender and paid directly to the builder at each progress payment stage.

How long it will take really depends on the size of your home build, the land and the inclusions you have selected. Whether you are looking at single storey home designs, two storey home designs, split level home designs, narrow home designs or acreage homes. Display homes are now available in multiple locations so you can decide which design you are looking for. Other aspects that affect the build time include the time of year and the weather conditions throughout your build. All of this is assessed, and a calculation is provided after we give you a quotation to build and achieve the approvals from the Authorities. The build time frame will be detailed in your building contract.

The cost to build a new home varies, depending on the type of home you want to build, the location and who you are securing your home loan from. With McDonald Jones, the cost to build a home is made lighter because we can offer each one of our clients the chance to save up to $12,000 on interest while you build! Just check out our MyChoice Home Loans to find out more. A handy tool that you can also use when calculating the cost of building a new home is our stamp duty calculator and our budget planner. Things like a stamp duty calculator in NSW will help you to factor in all of the extra fees, costs and extras that you need to understand when saving for a new home build.

Yes! We liaise with your local council and take care of all council approvals on your behalf.

At McDonald Jones, we provide a free tender for vacant land and standard homes. Where other builders charge for a tender, we make sure finding the right block for our client’s dream home is as easy as possible.

This depends on each customer’s personal situation. If a person has already found their dream location, we will work to find the home that suits their wish list and block. On the other hand, it is not uncommon for someone to see a display home and fall in love with the design. In this case, we work together to find the perfect block to fit their dream home.

Yes! At McDonald Jones, we encourage our clients to put their own personal stamp on their House Designs, by personalising them to suit their needs. With every home design, there is also a huge range of optional floor plans already worked out for you to choose from, and our Building & Design Consultants are there to help you find the perfect floor plan for your family, budget and lifestyle. Because we have such a vast range of different options available, there’s usually the perfect home already there.

Wherever you want to build a new home, from the beach to the mountains, from the tablelands to the city, McDonald Jones has the experience and the know-how to help you make it happen. We build single storey home designs, two storey home designs, split level home designs and acreage homes across the following regions:

• Sydney 
• Newcastle the Hunter Valley & Central Coast
• Mid North Coast
• Coffs Harbour
• South Coast
• Southern Tablelands
• Canberra Region

When you’re looking for Sydney home builders or home builders in Newcastle, McDonald Jones is the leading residential builder. We have display homes in Coffs Harbour and display homes in Canberra, as well as many other locations, so there are plenty of locations you can be inspired for your next dream home in person.

Click here to view our build area maps.

A steel frame home is simply better! Our exclusive SUPALOC steel frame made from Bluescope steel, is stronger, long-lasting and protective against the wild Australian weather. Plus, it comes with a 50year structural warranty*. To learn more about steel house frames, contact our team now.

As part of our initiative to make new homes across Australia greener and smarter, McDonald Jones now includes solar panels with every new build and electric car chargers in every garage with our exclusive Green Pack. New homes with solar panels are simply more sustainable, eco-friendly and better for your pocket. Find out more about all the benefits of our Green Pack here.

House and land packages usually consist of two steps: buying the land and then building the house. The loans for your house and land package can be arranged separately, but they are usually bundled together. House and land packages in Sydney, house and land packages in Newcastle and house and land packages in Canberra can be arranged through McDonald Jones Building & Design Consultants at your nearest display.

Depending on what kind of renovations you may need and the specifications of your existing home, you are likely to end up better off when you consider a Knockdown Rebuild package with McDonald Jones. With a knock down and rebuild process, you can choose your perfect dream home, without the hassle and building costs of renovations and old bits and pieces. With a new home, you get the added benefits of having absolutely everything brand new, from the slab and plumbing, all the way through to the wiring and appliances, along with the peace of mind of builder warranties for years to come. And the best part, you don’t have to move from the location you love.

When looking at the cost of a Knock down Rebuild, you will quickly notice that the price is fixed, as opposed to renovations, which can snowball into an out-of-budget nightmare. The knockdown rebuild cost is determined by which house you choose, whether that is a single storey home design or an acreage design. It is best to visit a display home to organise your free quote and site inspection early, so we can help determine all the costs for a new home, so you can compare the difference. If you’re looking for an alternative to a knockdown rebuild, why not consider a Fixed Price House & Land Package from McDonald Jones Homes?

While some say buying is more affordable than building new, there are many extra hidden costs when buying an old home.

Buying an established home may turn your life into an episode of The Block, from fixing foundations and painting walls, to adding energy-efficient appliances and building materials. Not only is this costly, but it’s time consuming and exhausting.

Building new offers flexibility. You can customise your rooms and work on your street appeal. You can spend less on replacements and save on energy bills. Best of all, you can live the life you deserve as you raise your family.

Remember, building a home vs buying a home isn’t just about money; it’s also about time and achieving the outcome that you want.

Conveyancing is the process of transferring the legal ownership of a property from one person or entity to another. We partner with MyChoice Conveyancing so you have a quicker and simpler way to secure your dream home.

This varies between council areas, however, on average 6 weeks +

We do this for you. You don’t need to do any of the dirty work. Talk to us today about your new home, and we’ll dig into it!

Almost all of our homes are ‘slab on ground’ construction. We level the block (for more information, see ‘Cut and Fill’) and then pour a flat concrete slab on top.

However, underneath and inside the slab, there is a world of difference from one site to the next, depending on what type of SOIL is on and under the ground. Some blocks of land have very sandy soils, some have a lot of clay, some have rock – the makeup of what’s under the ground has a significant effect on what happens to whatever is built on top of the ground, especially when it rains.

To identify what type of soil is on a block, a borehole test is conducted. There are two important pieces of information that a borehole test confirms for us: soil classification and bearing.

You can learn more about this by watching our animated video here

The way soil changes when it comes in contact with moisture is called reactivity. Soils that are sandy and well-drained don’t really change when they get wet – they aren’t at all absorbent, and the water naturally runs away between the sand particles. However soils that are a mix of sand and clay, or very ‘clayey’ and dense, hold and absorb the moisture.

The wetter they get, the more they swell and expand, and once they dry out again they shrink back down. Because they react to moisture, clay/sand mixtures or clay soils are known as moderately or highly reactive – and referred to as M class or H class. Recently, H class has been separated more specifically into H1 and H2.

Determining a soil type is traditionally (and still often) done by sight, but sometimes if the soil looks like it might be on the border between two types (H1 vs H2 for example) the engineer will take a sample back to the laboratory for a ‘shrink swell test’ – a test designed to measure the change in volume of a soil sample in a controlled environment to more accurately classify it.

The reactivity of the site affects how strong the slab will need to be to cope with the constant swelling and shrinking of the soil underneath it – our ‘standard’ slab type (M) needs to have thicker concrete structure to cope with H1 class conditions, and thicker steel reinforcement to cope with H2.

Some other classes that may show up in NSW are Extremely Reactive – requiring specialised engineering assessment, or at the other end of the scale, sandy – which, although very well drained, can be unstable in other ways.

You can learn more about this by watching our animated video here

Due to the heavy weight of houses, the other important consideration when it comes to foundations is weight distribution. Speaking in practical terms, if we build half a house slab on the sand and half a slab on a rock, what happens when the sands shift?

Therefore, the home must be founded on an even bearing i.e. the ability of the ground to support equal weight (or pressure) across the entire footprint of the home. This is what piering achieves.

A concrete pier is a column of concrete bored into the ground that holds part of the weight of the house and transfers it to a common ‘strata’ or layer of dirt.

Under the ground, dirt is always in layers. Over the course of years and years, the layers build up on top of bedrock, and when our engineer visits the site to complete a bore hole test, they are drilling down into the ground to see what the layers are like under where the house will be built - essentially trying to take a snapshot of the layers under the ground.

BASIX stands for ‘Building and Sustainability Index’ – it’s a NSW energy efficiency rating scheme. Each new home in NSW has to reach a certain level of energy efficiency before it can be built, and BASIX is like a point score system – different parts of your home carry a rating that either gives you points or deducts points… so you add, subtract and add until you get to the right level, and then you get a green tick on a certificate that we send to council or your certifier as part of your approval.

You’ve probably heard that most new homes need a water tank. It’s catching rainwater from the roof of your home and plumbing it back to the house for tasks like flushing and garden watering - that’s really the most influential part of the BASIX scheme that you will notice.

Registered land means (subject to approvals, etc.) your block has been defined and is ready to be built on.

This is land that is part of a subdivision, i.e. a large parcel of land being divided up into individual lots. This land is referred to as unregistered until the developer of the site completes all the work required to create the individual lots. This has to be approved by council and the plans sent to Land Registry Services (previously known as Land and Property Information) for each individual lot to be registered. This can take a while to do, and often the contract will specify in a clause that the developer has 12 to 18 months to complete this, with an extension of time clause often included.

Stamp duty is a revenue levied by states on transactions, including the sale of property. The amount of stamp duty you pay will vary depending on the value of the property you intend to buy and is determined by your state’s government.