‘IKEA flat pack of housing’: Couple save $250k with shed-house build
Victorian grandparents Mandy and Trevor Allan are living in a shed with their grandson. While it may sound like a miserable retirement, the opposite is true for the Allans, whose stylish and functional home has become the envy of locals in their town.
The couple spent $550,000 to build their home in 2025, including the construction of a tool shed, which is far less than the $800,000 they budgeted for a traditional home build (excluding the separate shed) in 2021, before construction costs began blowing out.
Mandy Allan and her husband Trevor in front of their shed house in Bendigo, Victoria. Bill Conroy
The materials to construct their customised two-storey home were delivered to their property in flat-pack form on the back of a truck by Shed House Australia and assembled by the company’s building crew.
Their self-designed home includes a large pentagon-shaped window that overlooks a golf course, two “massive” bedrooms, two living rooms, a kitchen, bathroom, powder room and a five-metre-long wardrobe.
The full shed home cost at least $250,000 less than their original building plans and was completed in eight months. Mandy Allan was expecting their traditional build to take from one year to 18 months.
Prefabricated or modular homes, as well as flat-pack alternatives like shed homes, DIY tiny homes from Bunnings and granny flats are becoming popular alternatives to paying for the rising costs associated with traditional home building and renovating.
The Allans chose the iron shed exterior due to the low maintenance it requires. Bill Conroy
The federal government’s winding back of negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions for existing properties – but not for new homes – aims to improve building demand to help fix the nation’s housing supply crisis and make housing more affordable for younger generations.
The Allans wanted a home suitable for multi-generational living, as their 20-year-old grandson lives with them and they wanted to provide a separate space for him.
“We wanted big, open spaces. We didn’t want to feel enclosed,” Mandy Allan said.
“We’re transitioning into retirement. We were after very, very low maintenance, and the beauty of corrugated iron is that it lasts for a very long time and you don’t have to paint it.
“We did everything we possibly could ourselves. All of the cabinetry and wardrobes are from IKEA, but you probably wouldn’t know if I didn’t tell you.”
The couple bought a block of land in the Victorian city of Bendigo, which can have weather extremes of temperatures above 40 degrees in summer and below zero overnight. Mandy Allan said their home’s insulation was working brilliantly despite their ceiling height being 9.5 metres.
“It gets cold and it got damn hot this year. We moved in just before Christmas and we had that 40 degrees [weather]. We put in a couple of big reverse-cycle heating and cooling units and we have only ever used one cooler. It worked fantastically.”
Mandy Allan, a retired project manager, managed the home build herself. Bill Conroy
Allan co-ordinated the work herself as an owner-builder, as she is a retired project manager and the couple has previously renovated homes. They hired a Shed House Australia crew to construct the framing and tradies to do the internal work, but did as much as they could themselves.
Master Builders Australia warns that customers should seek advice before purchasing any prefabricated or flat-pack housing, including on what the local council’s and state government’s rules are and to understand future financial implications.
“Housing innovation is only one part of solving Australia’s housing shortage. It is not a substitute for the barriers to supply being removed,” a Master Builders spokesperson said.
“Australia needs to see a material uplift in supply and governments at all levels must focus on policies that encourage investment, improve efficiency, cut unnecessary red tape and grow the construction workforce while delivering enabling infrastructure.”
“The cost of land has gone up. We can’t control that. The commodity that we can control is how we build.”— Katie Penfold, Shed House Australia
Builders are absorbing cost increases across new home or renovation projects of up to 8 per cent since the war in the Middle East sent fuel prices rocketing. New quotes for fixed-price contracts will soon start reflecting higher prices for raw materials across timber, steel and plastic pipes.
Economists are tipping that prices won’t go down once supply chain issues are resolved as the backlog of orders combined with the ongoing shortages of tradies only reinforces the upward pressure on project costs.
Home prices were rising due to the nation’s vast undersupply of housing but property tax changes in the federal budget, interest rate rises and the Middle East war are causing values to decline in Sydney and Melbourne.
‘IKEA flat pack of housing’
Shed House Australia was founded by Rhys Uhlich during the pandemic, before ex-Mirvac employees Katie and David Penfold came on board as directors in 2021.
“Think of it as the IKEA flat pack of housing. Once your slab is down and you’re ready to go, our future frame structure and cladding can go up anywhere between three days and a week. For some of the larger ones, maybe two weeks,” Katie Penfold said.
The company has built 150 homes across Australia in the last three years. They’ve received 20,000 inquiries in the last two years. The company designs homes for metropolitan and regional locations.
“There was just this strong underlying interest. It wasn’t us driving inquiry and looking for the people, it was more us responding to it and working out how to deal with [the interest] because there’s an obvious need and desire … as there is a lack of options for people in the market,” Katie Penfold said.
“The cost of land has gone up. We can’t control that. The commodity that we can control is how we build.
“If we can make sure that we’re providing this really refined architectural outcome in a simple way, which is faster, easier, and more efficient for people to build that in a way becomes … a bit of a no-brainer.”
While Bunnings has entered into the do-it-yourself home build space, IKEA says it is not working on any assemble-yourself housing plans.
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Lucy Slade covers real estate for The Australian Financial Review, based in the Sydney newsroom. She was previously the breaking news reporter. Email Lucy at lslade@afr.com
