Three-bedroom house just 2.3m wide is built on a tiny piece of land a family bought for $250,000

When Kirsty Volz and David Toussant saw a piece of land in Brisbane on sale for just $250,000 in a Queensland Rail selloff they couldn’t believe their luck.

But there was one big hurdle to overcome – the plot backing on to a train line in Clayfield, only 7km northeast of the CBD, was less than 3m wide and just 317sqm.

To get around this, the family-of-three built what could be the narrowest house in the Queensland capital by building up instead of out, creating a 2.3m-wide two-storey home.

The house managed to fit three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full-sized kitchen, and even a backyard for their golden retriever complete with a shed and small garden.

‘I guess a lot of people thought building on it was just too hard. We thought ‘we can afford that!” Ms Volz told the Courier Mail.

The house is built as two narrow towers connected in the centre by sheltered walkways and surrounded by a perforated timber facade for privacy from the neighbours.

The void in the middle of the two towers allows them to put plants in and lets through the breeze and sunlight. 

With such narrow street frontage there wasn’t room for both a carport and a front door, so the entrance is through back tower via a walkway down the side of the house.

The house managed to fit three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a full-sized kitchen, and even a backyard for their golden retriever complete with a shed and small garden

The house is built as two narrow towers connected in the centre by sheltered walkways and surrounded by a perforated timber facade for privacy from the neighbours

Ms Volz’s mother has already claimed the third bedroom for her old age and the couple were already making money renting it out. 

Outside-the-box houses on small lots are becoming increasingly popular as planning rules on house sizes are relaxed to cope with Australia’s growing population.

‘Blocks of land that may have been seen as unbuildable or undevelopable are now becoming buildable,’ Shane Goiodwin from Base Architecture told 9 News.

He said at any given time his firm had 10 to 12 small lot projects on the go.