Owner-⁠builder in Victoria: certificate of consent and inspections

Building your own home, or running the trades yourself on an extension, makes you the builder under the Building Act 1993. The permit is issued to you, the inspections are booked by you, and the duties that normally sit with a registered builder sit with you. Here is the order to do things in.

Who needs a certificate of consent

If you intend to carry out domestic building work on land you own, and the cost is above the threshold in the Building Act 1993, you need an owner-builder certificate of consent from the Building and Plumbing Commission (the BPC, which took over from the Victorian Building Authority) before a building permit can be issued to you. The threshold is the estimated cost of the work — labour and materials, GST included — not what you expect to pay out of pocket once your own time is left out, so most new homes and extensions sit above it. The certificate covers work on or ancillary to a single dwelling. It does not cover demolition, restumping or relocating a house; those need a registered practitioner.

A building surveyor cannot issue the permit to an owner-builder without the certificate. Chasing it after lodging the permit application puts the job on hold.

Eligibility and the eLearning step

The BPC sets the conditions. The ones that matter:

• You own the land, or are a director of the company or a beneficiary of the trust that does.
• You live in the home, or intend to. The certificate is not for investment builds.
• You have not had an owner-builder permit on a different property in the previous five years. Further work on the same home is fine, and the BPC can grant an exemption in special circumstances.
• You have passed the BPC’s owner-builder eLearning assessment, done online in a few hours. It gives you a completion code for the application form.
• You hold a current construction induction card (a white card). The BPC treats an owner-builder site as a workplace and asks for a copy of both sides of the card with the application.

Allow a few weeks from starting the eLearning to holding the certificate. Start before you need the permit, not after.

What the permit application needs from an owner-builder

The same package a builder would lodge, with the certificate in place of the builder’s registration and insurance:

1. The certificate of consent.
2. Architectural drawings, structural engineering, the soil report and the 7-star energy rating report.
3. The title, and any planning permit with its endorsed plans.
4. Council’s legal point of discharge for stormwater.
5. Details of your trades. A trade you contract for work above the key threshold must be registered, and above the insurance threshold their work must be covered under the BPC’s statutory insurance scheme — they pay the premium and get a notice of cover. The two thresholds differ, so check before you sign.

Our new home building permits page explains each document. Send what you have and we will list what is missing, once.

The mandatory inspection stages and how to book

The Building Regulations 2018 prescribe the mandatory notification stages for a house: before placing a footing; before pouring any in situ reinforced concrete member, which for most houses is the slab; on completion of the framework, before it is lined; and final, on completion of all building work. That is the legal baseline. Other inspections depend on the job — they are confirmed when we quote.

At each stage you must notify us and wait for the inspection before the work is covered. Pouring before the footing inspection means digging the concrete out, or paying an engineer to certify what cannot be seen.

To book, email inspections@cstonebs.com or use the form on the contact page with the permit number, site address, stage and preferred date. Give one business day’s notice and have the engineering on site.

At final we need the trade certificates. The certificates required depend on the job — we tell you what’s needed when we quote. Collect each one when you pay the invoice. Once they are in and the final is clear, we issue the occupancy permit (new home) or certificate of final inspection (extension).

Building the shed yourself

A shed or garage is where most people meet these rules for the first time. There is no separate “owner-builder permit” for a shed. It is the ordinary building permit, issued to you instead of a builder, plus the certificate of consent once the job is above the cost threshold in the Building Act 1993. A shed in the yard of your home is work ancillary to a single dwelling, so the certificate covers it. If the shed is small enough to be exempt from a building permit, none of this applies — our shed and garage permits page sets out the exemption, and we check it for free.

Count the whole job, not the kit price. The threshold is the cost of the building work: the shed, the slab or footings, the site works and the labour to put it up, yours included. A kit that sits under the threshold on its own is usually over it once the slab is in.

Who is the builder? The answer decides whether you need the certificate at all.

• Supply and erect. The shed company or its erector takes on the whole job — slab, frame, cladding — under one contract. Above the key threshold that contractor must be a registered builder, and they are the builder named on the permit. You are not an owner-builder.
• Kit plus separate trades. You buy the kit, one contractor pours the slab, another stands the shed, an electrician wires it. Nobody has taken on the whole job, so you have. You are the owner-builder, and the certificate applies once the whole job is above the threshold.
• Doing it yourself. Same answer. You are the builder, and the duties in this guide sit with you.

The permit package. Smaller than for a house: the supplier’s engineering, certified for your site’s wind classification; a site plan with the distances to each boundary and to the house; the title; and the certificate of consent. The same goes for a verandah, carport or pergola attached to the house, plus a detail showing how it fixes to the existing frame. Siting is where sheds come unstuck — too close to a boundary, too tall near a fence, in front of the house — so have the supplier’s drawing checked before you order.

Inspections and sign-off. For a shed the inspections depend on the job — they are confirmed when we quote and booked the same way as above. The job finishes with a certificate of final inspection rather than an occupancy permit. Keep it with the title; a buyer will ask for it.

Selling an owner-built home

Section 137B of the Building Act 1993 applies if you sell within the statutory period after completion — the key threshold is six years and six months from the date of your occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection. Before you sign a contract of sale you need two things.

First, a defects inspection report on the owner-built work from a prescribed building practitioner — a registered building inspector or building surveyor, a registered architect or an endorsed building engineer — prepared within the six months before the contract and given to the buyer. Second, cover for the work under the BPC’s statutory insurance scheme, which from 1 July 2026 replaced the old owner-builder domestic building insurance policy: you pay the premium through the BPC before the contract and it issues a notice of cover, which goes in the section 32 statement with the report.

Work at or below the scheme’s cost threshold is outside it, and what matters is the date of the contract of sale, not when the work was done, so allow a few weeks. The contract must also set out the statutory warranties on the work. Cornerstone does not prepare section 137B defects reports — a practitioner who offers them does — but the occupancy permit or certificate of final inspection that the report and the cover rely on comes from your building surveyor, so keep it safe.

Where owner-builders get stuck

• Starting work before the building permit is issued.
• Permit application in, certificate of consent still pending.
• Planning to do the demolition or restumping yourself. The certificate does not cover it.
• Covering work before it has been inspected.
• Chasing trade certificates months after the trade left site.
• Changing the design mid-build without amending the permit.
• Losing the paperwork a buyer, bank or insurer will want later.

Planning an owner-build? Send the drawings you have, or just the address, through the quote form. We will confirm what you need and quote a fixed fee covering the permit, every inspection and the sign-off, within one business day.