Three partners, one specification
Formed in 2026 to put a well-built, income-producing dwelling on an ordinary Australian lot — with the supply chain, the delivery team and the standard under one roof.
DollarBuild was formed in 2026 by three partners who had each spent years on a different part of the same problem: how to put a well-built, income-producing dwelling on an ordinary Australian lot at a cost that makes sense.
One partner had built and leased dozens of backyard dwellings in Melbourne through the Optima Real Estate group and knew exactly which line items blew out and why. One had spent a career inside a family manufacturing group in China and could see how much of an Australian build cost was simply procurement done badly. One was the builder on the ground — the person the surveyor rings, the person the trades answer to.
DollarBuild is the company where those three things sit together: a fixed, named specification; a supply chain that can deliver it to a container; and a delivery team that can put it on a slab in Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast or Sydney.
Three partners, three halves of the problem
Majority shareholder and director. Co-founder of the Optima Real Estate group, where the backyard-dwelling programme behind the portfolio on this site was built and leased. Sets the product, the specification and the standard every project is held to.
Integrates procurement, factory quality control and export consolidation across a manufacturing network built by his family’s industrial group over decades. Owns the material kit end to end: what goes in the container, and whether it is right when it comes out.
Runs the building side in Australia — the registered builder relationship, the trades, the surveyor inspections and the site programme. The person accountable for the building being where the drawings say it is, when the programme says it will be.
- Ownership
- Majority-owned and directed by the founder, with two partner shareholders
- Based
- Melbourne, Victoria
- Delivers in
- Melbourne · Brisbane · Gold Coast · Sydney
- Builds under
- Registered building practitioners in each state; DollarBuild provides the registered name and number in writing with every proposal
How to check any builder before you sign — including us
Building work is licensed state by state and every state publishes a free public register. Look the contracting entity up on the register for the state your lot is in, and ask for the registered practitioner’s name and number in writing. DollarBuild provides ours with every proposal, before contract.
- Victoria
- Building and Plumbing Commission register (successor to the VBA). Domestic building work over $10,000 must be under a written major domestic building contract; over $16,000 it must carry domestic building insurance or Home Warranty.
- Queensland
- QBCC licensee register. Every building certifier who issues an approval in Queensland must be QBCC-licensed.
- New South Wales
- NSW Fair Trading licence check under the Home Building Act 1989.
What does DollarBuild actually do?
We design and deliver three income-producing dwelling products — a 30 m² studio, a 60 m² three-bedroom, an 80 m² three-bedroom two-bathroom and a 300 m² nine-room rooming house — through three delivery methods: a factory-direct material kit installed by local trades, prefabricated modules craned onto a slab, or a conventional local build. Feasibility, design, approvals, procurement, construction and handover.
Do you publish prices?
Not on the website yet. Pricing is issued as a written proposal after feasibility, because the delivery method and the site conditions change the number, and a price that ignores them is not one you can rely on. The proposal itemises the specification and the site-specific items separately.
Which delivery method should I choose?
You do not have to choose in advance. Feasibility checks what your site can physically take — crane access, street width, overhead lines, truck access — and what you are optimising for, then recommends one. The product and specification are the same whichever way it is built.
Where do you build?
Melbourne first, and the founding team has delivered in Brisbane, the Gold Coast and Sydney. Regional Victoria — Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo — on request.
Do I need a planning permit?
A building permit, always. A planning permit, usually not for a 60 m² or smaller second dwelling on an eligible Victorian lot over 300 m² since Amendment VC253 — but overlays change that, and a rooming house is assessed on different rules. We answer it for your address in writing at feasibility.
Is the material kit compliant in Australia?
Each product class in the kit carries the certification Australian use requires — WaterMark for plumbing products, AS 2047 for windows and doors, electrical fittings compatible with AS/NZS 3000 — and the structure, slab and frame are Australian and designed to Australian standards. The building surveyor inspects the finished work exactly as they would any other build.
Can we work in Mandarin?
Yes. The partners work in both English and Mandarin, and this site is published in both.
Talk to the people who build it.
Send the address and one of the partners will read it before anyone calls you.