General tips for building a house in Brunei

31st May 2008

Before deciding to build a house, there are quite a number of factors that need to be considered. Especially in Brunei, you have to undergo numerous stages and you need to pass each stage before you are even granted to build your house. Based on my experience, thorough preparation either mentally or physically was fully utilised and almost exhausted but in the end it’s all worth it. These are few of the lists that I could think off based on my experience before and while building my dream house.

1. Firstly, you need to confirm the location of your land whether it is within or outsite the Town and Country planning area (Jabatan Perancang Bandar dan Desa). If the land is outside the Town and Country planning area, it will certainly make your life and approval of your house to be a lot easier as you will only deal with the Land Department (Jabatan Tanah). In my case, my land was only several metres within the Town and Country Planning line and in this case it proved to be a lot difficult and tedious as several approval stages had to be met which took quite a lot of time than anticipated. Do not also forget to pay the land taxes and any outstanding payments i.e. presumably you have not paid the taxes for several years.

2. Once your location is confirmed, and depending whether you need to land fill your area you will also need to apply for the Earth Work Permit. In my case, I had to apply for the earth work permit from the Town and Country Planning department. In this stage, you need to submit a copy of the land grant (geran tanah), survey map (map juruukur) which you could get from the Survey department, the contractor company that will do the earth work, the specific land that you will excavate for the land filling and a sketch of the land you want to land fill by using word document or print artist. In the sketch you need to specify the height that you want to land fill and the position of the earth drain.

3. If your land is more 0.5 acres, you will also need to do a topographic survey which needs to be submitted along with the earth work application. In my case, since the land is almost 2 acres, I had no choice and had to spend just under $1K for the survey.

4. The approval for the earth work application took almost 1 month. And once you completed the earth work i.e. levelling or land filling, you need to notify the Town and Country department (if applicable) for them to check and validate the earth work. And this took almost another month before they grant you a formality letter with their clauses that had to be adhered. However, by the time I received the validation letter for completion of the earth work, I had to wait almost 3 months for the letter.

5. Presumably before all of the above things takes place, you had your house plan up and ready for the submission as well and you could only do this after the Earth Work application has been approved and validated. Remember to notify the Land Department of your intention to build a house as you need to pay “Royalty” for the land filling or else, they will not approve your house building application.

6. In the house plan I had made several considerations as listed below depending on your taste and design;
a) Position of the electrical fittings i.e. lights, fans, air-cons, switches, water heater, exhaust fan should be included and available in the house plan.
b) Reasonable living room, dining, bedroom or bathroom sizes and spaces. Get a measuring tape from a local store and each time you took a glance at the house plan, measure it against the actual area in order to avoid future regrets.
c) Depending on your budget, make sure that all the necessary rooms are included. Planning on the numbers of rooms and the position of these rooms are equally as important as designing them. In our case, we invest on having a walk-in closet, a home theatre room, a study room, guest bedroom, a prayer room, ablution area, powder room, fully ensuite bedrooms for our kids, separate dry and wet kitchens, a dedicated laundry area, store rooms, a dining room and 2 living rooms i.e. formal and informal and a garage.
d) Lastly I think you should not change your plan a lot. Be firm with your decision and think it through and not just leaving all the thinking to your architect. Your preference is all it matters as you will live and let your kids grow in your house for many years to come.


7. The house construction application took much longer than I anticipated as it took me almost half a year before I was granted the approval. Within the application, there were several stepping blocks that I had to encounter such as, I was asked to do a staking out survey from a registered surveyor which cost me a good $400. Then there were the plan issue that the Town and Country planning was not happy about and need to do minor changes on the plan. By the way, 10 sets of the house plan need to be printed out for the approval as it had to be submitted to several government department namely; Jabatan Daerah, Jabatan Kesihatan, Jabatan Ukur, Jabatan Tanah, Jabatan Kerja Raya, Jabatan Electric, Jabatan Bomba, Jabatan Perancang Bandar dan Desa and Jabatan Telekom. Once any change is made to the plan, you will need to submit the latest version again to all these departments. However, all of this will be done and followed up by your architect. All you can do is just sit tight and wait.

8. Once your house is approved, and then you are only half way for the exciting bit of building your dream home.

Just a word of advice, have a lot of patience and visit your site as often as possible and do not just leave it to your architect or your construction manager. You know what you want for your dream home and always trust your instinct. Ask questions if you are not sure about the layout of the construction and pay a visit to your architect and construction manager. Ensure and build a good relationship with them and especially to the construction workers as they put a lot of man hour and hard work in building your house. People make mistakes and it’s all up to us to spot that mistake before it is too late.