House Raising Cost Calculator

Understanding house raising costs in Australia

What house raising costs in Australia in 2026

Raising a standard timber framed house of about 130 square metres to legal head height, with new steel posts on pad footings, generally costs between $60,000 and $95,000 in south east Queensland and northern New South Wales where the trade is most established. In Melbourne and Sydney the same job typically runs $75,000 to $120,000 because there are fewer specialist contractors and site access is usually tighter.

A simple lift and relevel of under a metre, essentially a restumping exercise with a modest height gain, is a much smaller project at $28,000 to $50,000. At the other end, lifting a large 200 square metre home over 3 metres to create a full storey underneath can reach $130,000 to $180,000 for the structural work alone, before any of the space beneath is enclosed.

The three phases of the project

Phase one is disconnection and preparation. Services are cut, the house is separated from its existing stumps or piers, and steel bearers are threaded underneath. This is where a masonry or brick veneer house becomes expensive, because the walls have no ability to span and must be needled and braced continuously.

Phase two is the lift itself. Hydraulic jacks raise the house in increments of a few hundred millimetres, with timber cribbing stacked under it at each stage. A straightforward lift takes one to three days of actual jacking, and it is genuinely less than 15 per cent of the total cost.

Phase three is the new substructure and reconnection. New footings are dug and poured, posts or piers are installed, the house is lowered onto them and packed level, and then the plumber, electrician and carpenter come back to reconnect services and build the new stair. This phase is where the bulk of the money and almost all of the time goes.

What the wall construction does to your price

Timber framed weatherboard and chamferboard houses are the ideal candidates. They are light, they flex without cracking, and the trade in Queensland has been lifting them for a century. These are the houses that sit at the bottom of the price range.

Brick veneer adds roughly 30 to 40 per cent. The frame lifts fine but the brick skin has to be supported independently or removed and relaid, and the articulation joints will crack regardless of how carefully it is done. Full masonry and double brick adds 70 to 100 per cent and requires a much more elaborate steel grid, and some raisers will decline the work outright.

Fibro clad houses raise easily because they are light, but pre 1990 sheeting is asbestos containing material. Sheets crack during a lift more often than not, and once you are into licensed removal you are frequently better off recladding the entire house while it is up, at $18,000 to $35,000.

Building in underneath

The reason most people raise a house is the space it creates. Simply pouring a slab and closing in the perimeter as a garage or storage shell costs roughly $35,000 to $55,000 for a typical footprint. Creating fully compliant habitable rooms with insulation, waterproofing, glazing, wet areas and finishes is a different order of project at $1,800 to $2,600 per square metre, so $150,000 to $250,000 for a 100 square metre ground level.

That fit out is a full development application in almost every council, and the requirements catch people out. You need 2.4 metres finished ceiling height in habitable rooms, which is why the lift itself needs to be around 3 metres once you account for slab thickness, floor build up and the existing bearer depth. Getting the lift height wrong by 200 millimetres can render the whole space unapprovable.

The costs that sit outside the raiser quote

Plumbing disconnection and reconnection with new vertical runs is $8,000 to $18,000. Electrical disconnection, a new descent to the switchboard and compliance certification is $6,000 to $14,000. A new external or internal stair to the raised entry level is $8,000 to $20,000 depending on materials and whether it is covered.

Then there is accommodation. Services are off for six to twelve weeks on a typical lift and restump, longer if you are building in underneath. Renting a comparable house in a capital city for that period is $6,000 to $18,000, and it is the single most commonly forgotten line item in the whole project.

Engineering and approvals add $6,000 to $15,000 for a straight lift and considerably more where new living space is involved. A structural engineer must design the new footings and the lifting methodology, and a certifier signs off the finished work.

Is it worth doing

In flood affected areas the answer is often driven by insurance rather than amenity. Lifting above the defined flood level can move a property from uninsurable or heavily loaded premiums into standard cover, and in some catchments government resilience programs have contributed toward the cost.

For everyone else the test is simple: compare the fully loaded cost of raising and building in underneath against the cost of a ground level extension or a second storey addition on the same block. Raising usually wins where the block is small, where setbacks prevent building outward, and where the existing house has good bones and character worth keeping. It rarely wins where the house itself is in poor condition, because you end up spending significant money to preserve something that needed replacing anyway.