House Relocation in Townsville

House relocation and whole-house removals

In Queensland, relocating a house is often called house removals or building removal. The whole house goes: frame, floors, walls and roof. It's jacked off its stumps, loaded onto a hydraulic trailer, driven to its new block and set down on new footings, tied down for your wind rating and ready to reconnect.

Most Townsville house removals start one of two ways. You're clearing a block and want the house gone without knocking it down, or you've found a removal home and need it brought to land you already own. Either way, the building move is managed end to end — from site inspection and permits to set-down on new stumps.

What the job covers

• Inspecting the house, both blocks and the route
• Engineering, approvals and oversize transport permits
• Removing stairs, verandahs and anything fixed to the ground
• Cutting the house or taking the roof off if the route needs it
• Lifting, loading and moving, usually overnight with escorts
• Setting down on new concrete or steel stumps, levelling and tying down
• Rejoining, refitting and making good

Will your house move?

Timber houses on stumps move best: Queenslanders, workers' cottages, post-war highsets and lowsets. Brick and slab-on-ground homes generally can't be relocated. Height, width and the power lines between the two blocks decide whether the house travels whole, roof-off or in sections. A few photos and rough measurements are usually enough to confirm how the house will travel.

What changes the price

Every relocation is quoted on the job: the size and weight of the house, the distance and route, whether it needs cutting or roof removal, the stumps and footings at the new block, and how easy it is to get a trailer on and off each site. You get a written, itemised quote before anything is booked.

Built for North Queensland conditions

Townsville houses get set down for cyclone Region C, with tie-downs designed to your block's wind rating. Footings are engineered for the area's reactive clay. Routes are planned around Ergon power lines, and moves are timed for the dry months when blocks are firm enough to take a loaded trailer.

Areas we cover

Houses move in both directions across Townsville and North Queensland. Older Queenslanders and workers' cottages are regularly lifted off redeveloped blocks in inner-city and character suburbs such as Hermit Park, Railway Estate, South Townsville, West End, Mysterton, Mundingburra and North Ward, along with post-war timber highsets from Aitkenvale, Gulliver, Currajong, Pimlico and Kirwan, Cranbrook and Condon.

Many of those houses travel out to acreage along Hervey Range Road at Alice River and Rangewood, north up the Bruce Highway to Bluewater, Black River, Jensen and Rollingstone on the northern beaches, or south to Alligator Creek, Nome and Woodstock. Longer highway moves run between Townsville, Ayr, Home Hill and Giru in the Burdekin, and inland along the Flinders Highway to Charters Towers.

Common questions