Don’t let a heritage overlay hold you back

There are plenty of advantages to owning a home in an area that has a heritage overlay in place.

While renovating in a heritage area can slow down the planning process (due to most local councils’ desire to keep the streetscape intact) you can still do a lot to create a very modern and well-appointed designer home.

A big advantage of living in a designated heritage area is that you can live in an area you love and enjoy ‘blue chip’ capital growth, without having to endure the disaster of someone knocking-up an “off-the-shelf, high-volume-building-company” house next door.

In the main, heritage restrictions apply to the exterior façade and what can actually be seen when viewing the home from the street.

This means you can’t put a tall, three-storey ‘box on the back’, but it certainly shouldn’t stop you from completing a major interior renovation at the front and/or a sleek and contemporary ‘out and up’ extension at the rear.

In a heritage-overlay situation, we agree with council in retaining the heritage façade and the best period features of the front rooms – such as skirting boards, timber floors and cornices – minus the doilies, brass fittings and lace curtains!

So, don’t let a heritage overlay deter you, because with the right forethought and design, you can still have a brilliantly renovated heritage home incorporating a stunning contemporary extension to perfectly reflect your exciting lifestyle.