Katanning Home Builders

Some Katanning buyers want a serviced lot inside the townsite grid. Others want a paddock a few minutes out. We understand what each one needs, and we build both. The Rural Building Co. has been creating homes across regional Western Australia since 1992, from Kalbarri in the north to Albany in the south. We are an award-winning WA builder, proudly built by WA Country Builders (BC11422), and we design for people who value craftsmanship and a real connection to the land.

Katanning sits on the Great Southern Highway, 290 km from Perth and 168 km from Albany, and it is the largest town in the Upper Great Southern. The name is thought to come from the Noongar word Kartannin, meaning big meeting place. About 3,637 people live in the town itself, and the saleyards 3 km out are the largest roofed sheep saleyard in the southern hemisphere.

That size shows in what the town offers. There is a senior high school and three primary schools, a hospital, an aquatic centre, a library, a public art gallery, and a retail district with more than 100 heritage-listed buildings and eight art murals around it. Health care, manufacturing and agriculture are the biggest employers across 1,807 jobs, and five decades of meat processing work have made Katanning one of the most multicultural communities in regional Western Australia.

A town block and a farm block are two different builds. On the grid, services are already at the boundary. On a paddock you sort access, power and water first, and the house has to stand on its own. We start both the same way, on the block itself.

Lake Ewlyamartup, a 100 hectare recreation lake, sits 17 km east of Katanning on Langaweira Road. It has a boat ramp, picnic and barbecue facilities and toilets, and around 95 bird species have been recorded there.

Blocks out this way are rural rather than serviced, so power, water and access are the first three things to work out, well before the design. The Point View | Original is designed for a site with something worth looking at, and turns the main living areas towards the outlook.

Badgebup is one of the farming districts around Katanning, and the Badgebup church, built in 1922, is listed among the area’s heritage sites. The land around it is cropping and grazing country, the same mix that fills the Katanning saleyards.

On a paddock block the house stands on its own, so which way it faces, where the shade falls and where the wind comes from matter more than they do in town. The Country House | Classic is a farmhouse plan drawn for open land, and we set the orientation to suit your block before anything is priced.

Katanning-Nyabing Road runs out of town past the saleyards, 3 km from the centre, and on into the cropping and grazing country those yards are there to serve. Sheep sell on Wednesday mornings and anyone can watch from the viewing platform.

On a working property the house shares the block with sheds, yards and a driveway that already exists, so where it sits matters as much as what it is. The Kingston | Original is a smaller farmhouse plan that suits a property where the house is not the biggest building.

Woodanilling has its own shire, one of the eleven local governments in the Great Southern, and Katanning is the town it looks to for the senior high school, the hospital and the main retail district.

That suits buyers who want land or a village block with a full-service town close by. We look at access and water early, because both feed straight into siteworks, the work to prepare your block before the build starts.

Tambellup is one of the two towns in the Shire of Broomehill-Tambellup, and another of the towns Katanning services. The farms around it run livestock and grow cereal crops, the mix the whole Great Southern economy is built on.

Our nearest office is Albany, two hours south of Katanning, and we are upfront about that. Every build starts with a full site assessment on the block itself, and we have been working across regional Western Australia since 1992.

Kojonup is about half an hour west of Katanning on Albany Highway, and a shire seat in its own right. The military barracks there, built in 1845, is the oldest building in the town and now holds a museum.

We cover both towns and the farming country in between. If you are weighing up a block in one against a block in the other, tell us about both, because the services at the boundary and the run in from the road often decide it.