When you take an owner-builder permit, you take the builder’s insurance position with it — and nobody hands you the list of what that position contains. This guide is the list: the policies that protect the build, the ones that protect people, and the state schemes that follow you when you eventually sell. Figures below are indicative broker ranges, not quotes — the market moves, so always price your own project.
The two policies almost every build needs
Construction works insurance (contract works)
Covers the works themselves — the part-built house, materials on site, and damage from fire, storm, theft, vandalism and accidents. Your half-framed house is not covered by anyone else’s policy: not the trades’ insurance, not home and contents (which doesn’t exist yet). Sold to owner-builders as a fixed-term policy (commonly 12–24 months — match it to a realistic program, because extensions cost more than honesty up front).
Public liability
Covers injury to third parties and damage to neighbouring property arising from your site — the delivery driver, the neighbour’s fence, the visitor who ignores the signage. Typical limits are $10m–$20m, and it’s usually bundled with construction works as a combined owner-builder policy. Some certifiers and councils ask for evidence of it before site works start.
The people policies owner-builders forget
- You are not a worker on your own site. Workers compensation cannot cover the owner-builder’s own injuries — if you’re swinging tools, consider personal accident/illness cover, because your income doesn’t stop being needed when your wrist breaks.
- Volunteers aren’t covered either. The mates and family who “help out on the weekend” sit outside workers comp and outside your public liability if they’re injured. Voluntary workers cover exists for exactly this and costs little.
- Directly employed labour means workers compensation obligations — in NSW and VIC, registration applies once wages pass low thresholds (around $7,500/yr), and “labour-only contractors” you direct like employees can be deemed workers. Genuine licensed contractors carry their own cover — but sight the certificates before anyone starts, don’t assume.
Renovating? Cover the existing house too
Major structural work can restrict or void a standard home and contents policy — insurers expect to be told, and many cap the works value they’ll tolerate. Owner-builder renovation policies add existing structure cover so the original dwelling and the new works sit under one policy. Check with your current home insurer before demolition day, not after.
The sale-time schemes: what follows you, by state
This is where owner-builders get the rules most wrong, because each state runs a different scheme and the folklore blends them together:
| State | When you sell an owner-built home |
|---|---|
| NSW | Within 7.5 years of the permit: conspicuous contract warning required. HBC insurance for owner-builder work was abolished in 2015 — you can’t buy it. Statutory warranties (6 yrs major / 2 yrs other) pass to buyers. Full NSW guide |
| VIC | Within 6.5 years of completion: Domestic Building Insurance required for work over $16,000 plus a s137B defects report. Full VIC guide |
| QLD | Within 6 years of completion: prescribed written notice to the buyer warning the work is uninsured. Owner-builders can’t access the QBCC home warranty scheme at all. |
| Others | Each remaining state runs its own disclosure/insurance tail — check your state hub. |
During the build the schemes cut the other way too: in NSW and VIC, contractors you engage above thresholds ($20,000 / $16,000) must provide home warranty cover for their contracts — check certificates before signing. In QLD, contractors working for a permitted owner-builder don’t pay the warranty premium, which means a QLD owner-build carries no statutory warranty layer at all — your trade contracts and records are the whole safety net.
The order to do this in
- Price the combined construction + liability policy while budgeting — before contracts.
- Decide who’s swinging tools (you, volunteers, employees) and cover the people accordingly.
- Collect contractor insurance certificates as a condition of engagement — it’s a standard ask in the contract negotiation.
- Diarise the expiry and switch-over dates, including home and contents at handover.
- File everything — at sale time, your handover pack is your disclosure pack.