New homes
Custom home builder in Bayside Melbourne, for a house built around how you live
The Kiely Group builds architecturally designed new homes across Bayside Melbourne. We are a boutique, family-owned builder taking on a limited number of projects each year, so James is personally across every one of them from the first conversation to handover.
A house built around how you actually live
Most of our work is renovation, and that shapes how we build new homes too. Renovating teaches you exactly how houses fail over twenty years — where water finds its way in, which junctions move, which details were never going to survive being lived in. We build with that in mind.
We work from your architect's drawings, and we would rather join the conversation before those drawings are finished. A new build carries more decisions than a renovation, not fewer, and every one of them is cheaper to make on paper.
How our pre-construction planning works
What building new in Bayside actually involves
Very little land in Bayside is empty. A new home here almost always means a knockdown rebuild on a block that already has a house on it — which changes the job before it starts. What is on the title, what the neighbours look onto, what the existing services and levels allow, and what the council will accept all shape the design long before anyone thinks about finishes.
Blocks here also tend to be narrow and deep, with the good light at one end and the street at the other. That single constraint decides more about how a new house feels than any material selection. It is worth resolving on paper, early, with someone who will have to build it.
Site and feasibility
What the block can carry, where the services run, and what the planning framework allows. The answers shape the design rather than interrupt it later.
Design, with a builder alongside
Your architect drives the design. We sit beside it, flagging what is expensive to build and what is expensive only because of how it has been drawn.
Documentation and pricing
A price built on resolved detail rather than assumptions. Fewer provisional sums means fewer variations, which is where new-build budgets usually come apart.
Construction
One team, one point of contact, and a programme you can plan around. On a new build that programme runs for the better part of a year, so it needs to be real.
Fit-off and finishes
The stage where the house stops being a structure. Joinery, tapware, tiling and lighting — the detail people actually touch every day.
Handover and after
We walk the finished house with you, and we stay reachable. A boutique builder in a small market cannot afford a short memory.
Rebuild, or renovate?
It is the question we are asked most, and the honest answer is that it depends on what the existing house is worth keeping. A sound structure with a bad plan is usually worth renovating. A house that is failing structurally, or that would need every service replaced anyway, often is not. Either way it is a question worth answering with real numbers rather than instinct — which is exactly what our pre-construction planning is for. If the answer turns out to be renovation, we do that too — see home renovations.
Recent work
The Hampton whole-home renovation
The pool house in Hampton was built new from the ground up — the closest thing in our recent portfolio to a small custom home.
Kitchen, laundry, three bathrooms and a new pool house — with before-and-after photography of every room.
See the projectQuestions we get asked
- Do you build from our architect's plans?
- Yes. Most of our new-home clients arrive with an architect engaged. We prefer to be involved before the drawings are finalised so the design and the budget stay in step.
- How many new homes do you take on?
- A small number each year. That is the point of a boutique builder — James is personally across every project rather than running a portfolio of them.
- Do you do knockdown rebuilds?
- We do, though our focus is renovations and extensions. If you are weighing up a rebuild against a substantial renovation, that is exactly the sort of question our pre-construction work is designed to answer.
Building new in Bayside?
We work across Brighton, Hampton, Sandringham, Black Rock and the coast beyond.
Enquire
Let’s talk about your home.
The more you can tell us, the more useful our first conversation will be. James personally reads every enquiry.
We take on a limited number of projects each year, so the more detail you can give us, the faster we can tell you whether we are the right fit.
- Phone
- (03) 9787 4880
- Where we build
- Bayside Melbourne — Brighton, Hampton, Sandringham & surrounds