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Building her own island home: Michelle's prefab journey

After years of staying with family and house sitting, Michelle was looking for a small apartment near the Gold Coast. Instead, she built her own island retreat that has room to grow.

By Jessica Golding

  • Michelle wanted to get into the property market but soon realised a small unit near her daughter on the Gold Coast was out of reach.
  • Prefabricated homes – homes that are built offsite before being transported and affixed to land – offered her an alternative path to home ownership.
  • CommBank is the first major bank to offer finance for prefab homes during the offsite construction phase.

When Michelle set out to buy her first home, she had something modest in mind: a one-bedroom unit close to her daughter and granddaughter on the Gold Coast.

After years of staying with family and house sitting after a move east from Western Australia during COVID, she was eager to get into the property market and find a place to call her own, but soon found her search expanding beyond South East Queensland to Cairns and as far away as her hometown of Perth.

"I was looking literally everywhere," she says. "I didn't want to have a huge mortgage. I didn't want to keep up with the Joneses. I just wanted to have a roof over my head."

What she eventually found looked very different to the small apartment she'd imagined. Today, she owns a two-bedroom, custom-designed house on her own patch of land in the Southern Moreton Bay Islands, around 40 kilometres southeast of Brisbane. 

Even more unexpected was how the home came to be: it was built in a factory, transported to the island by ferry, and lifted into place by two cranes. "It was super exciting; overwhelming," says Michelle. "I was blown away – I just couldn't believe this was mine. I still don't believe it's mine."

Michelle’s home was built in a factory and transported to the island by ferry.

An alternative path to home ownership

Michelle's journey to building her own home began when CommBank home lending specialist Matthew Schneider introduced her to the idea of prefabricated (or prefab) homes – a modern construction method in which homes are built offsite before being affixed to land.

While a traditional house takes an average of 12 months to build, a prefabricated home can be ready in just 12 weeks. CommBank is the first major bank to offer finance for prefab homes during the offsite construction phase.

"I only knew about the tiny homes on wheels," says Michelle. "I started looking around and seeing that, oh my gosh, you can get a little house built. I just thought, 'Wow, I want to do that.'" 

Michelle with Jamie Durie and CommBank home lending specialist Matt during filming for season two of Future House.

The design and building process

After buying a block of land that would allow her to "skip over the water" to Redland Bay on a 30-minute ferry, then drive to the Gold Coast in around 40 minutes, Michelle started working with a local prefab manufacturer to create a home to suit her needs.

She settled on a 15-metre-long by 3.4-metre-wide design with two bedrooms at opposite ends, each opening to its own deck. The plan also featured a laundry, a bathroom with a "huge bathtub", a living area and a spacious deck off the kitchen.

Michelle was able to watch her home come to life throughout the construction process: "I could go to the factory at any time and have a look how it was going and just make sure everything was running smoothly."

She stayed in close contact with Matt from start to finish, with funds from CommBank released in stages throughout the build and installation. "Whenever I had any questions, I would quickly ring Matt and he would be straight onto it," she says. "It made the journey a lot better having him, as a banking specialist, around. It was a very easy process."

"It's sort of like a hippy, beachy theme,” Michelle says of her home, which is surrounded by bush.

Moving into her "own little retreat"

Michelle moved into the finished home in April this year and, after years of living under other people's roofs, feels a sense of peace in her own space: "It's just knowing that I've always got somewhere that I can lay my head."

"It's sort of like a hippy, beachy theme with lots of plants and lots of crystals everywhere," she says. "I love my bath and I just love the decks. And the big open windows which look out to the beautiful trees."

With the block surrounded by bush, she's enjoying the close connection to nature that her new home provides. "It's like I live inside an aviary because I've got kookaburras, magpies, curlews, every single bird you can think of," she says. "You can see every star and I see the sunrise and sunset beautifully because I'm north-facing, so it's really lovely."

Now that she's settled in, Michelle is thinking ahead to the future, with a plan to one day add a one-bedroom, one-bathroom studio to her land – an extension that was considered during the initial design phase.

"I want all of my family and friends to know that they've always got a home at my house if they're ever stuck."

Financing a prefabricated home build

Similar to CommBank's standard construction loan, a prefab loan is progressively funded while the home is being built. 

Customers building a prefab home with a CommBank Assessed Manufacturer can access up to 80 per cent of the build contract price or 150 per cent of the land equity – whichever is lower – while the home is being built offsite. 

Those building with non-CommBank Assessed Manufacturers can access up to 60 per cent of the build contract price or 120 per cent of the land equity.

To learn more about funding prefabricated homes, visit commbank.com.au/pre-fab or chat to a CommBank home lending specialist.

To see more of Michelle's story, stream Jamie Durie's Future House on 9Now.

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Published: 2 November 2026

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