About Restumping Albury Wodonga

What this site is

This site is a referral service. It connects home owners, landlords and buyers in Albury, Wodonga and the towns around them with local restumping and underpinning contractors. When an enquiry comes in, it is passed to a builder who works in the border region and holds the licence or registration the job needs on the side of the river the house is on. The site itself does not carry out the work. It does not quote, dig, jack, pour or sign anything; it explains what the job involves, which state's rules apply, and puts you in touch with someone who can do it.

All work is carried out by appropriately licensed or registered contractors. For a house on the New South Wales side that means a builder holding a NSW contractor licence under the Home Building Act 1989, which is required for residential building work over $5,000 in labour and materials including GST. For a house on the Victorian side it means a builder registered with the Building and Plumbing Commission, which for restumping and reblocking applies regardless of the value of the work. Where a builder works both sides under Automatic Mutual Recognition, the enquiry still goes to someone covered for the state the house is in.

A lot of the people who write in have just had a building or pest report land on a sale, or have been told by a renovation builder that nothing goes ahead until the floor is level. Others have lived with a door that sticks every March for ten years and have finally decided to find out why. The pages are written for all of them, and for the owner who has never organised a restump and does not know that the river changes the paperwork.

Why the guides are here

A restump is a week or two under a house surrounded by rules most people meet once, and on the border there are two sets of them. In New South Wales it is the licence at $5,000, the written contract at the same figure, the large job contract and Home Building Compensation cover at $20,000, and an approval route that is often exempt development unless the house is a heritage item or sits in one of Albury's 16 heritage conservation areas. In Victoria it is a building permit from a registered building surveyor, a builder registered with the Building and Plumbing Commission at any job value, a major domestic building contract at $10,000, and Home Warranty insurance at $20,000 from 1 July 2026. None of it is hard, but it is scattered across two regulators, two consumer bodies and two councils, and a first-time owner has no way to know which bits apply to a weatherboard in Lavington and which to a brick veneer in West Wodonga.

Then there is the ground. Soil reports we have seen for two Wodonga-side estates classify the sites as Class M under AS 2870, one of them M-D, with stumps and piers required at least 500 to 600 mm below the surface. The Bureau of Meteorology's Albury Airport station averages 639.2 mm of rain a year, with hot dry summers and cold winters that open the clay in late summer and close it again after the winter rain. No published soil report for the Albury side has come our way, and this site does not state a class for any address; a geotechnical test does that.

The pages here put the two states' rules, the thresholds and the ground in one place, in plain words, with a link to the source wherever a figure or a rule is stated.

How the rule pages are written

• Everything is dated. Each page describing a rule says the month it was written, and the thresholds quoted are the published figures at that date.
• The source is linked. The NSW Government licensing and contract pages, Service NSW for Home Building Compensation, NSW Planning for the Codes SEPP and its remedial work fact sheet, and Albury City Council for exempt development and heritage. The Building and Plumbing Commission for Victorian permits, registration, insurance and mutual recognition, Consumer Affairs Victoria for contracts, and City of Wodonga for its permit table. The Bureau of Meteorology for climate, the two Civiltest soil reports for the ground, and the NSW SES, Victoria SES and North East Catchment Management Authority for flood.
• Where this site and the source differ, the source is right. That is stated in the dated box on each rule page, and it is meant.
• Figures are quoted, not promised. Thresholds and dates change. Victoria's insurance threshold for the builder moved from $16,000 under the old domestic building insurance scheme to $20,000 under Home Warranty on 1 July 2026, and Albury City Council adopted a Heritage Strategy and Review on 27 July 2026 with amendments to the LEP and DCP still to follow. The pages say what the published figure was and point you at the body that sets it.
• Unverified things are said to be unverified. This site has not found a published AS 2870 site class for any Albury-side address, has not confirmed whether City of Wodonga is currently a declared termite area, and does not know whether your particular Albury address sits inside a heritage conservation area. It says so rather than guessing.
• You are pointed at the right person. A restumper is not the person to design underpinning, classify your soil, decide whether work is exempt development or sign a building permit. Those are the engineer, the geotechnical laboratory, the certifier or council in NSW, and the registered building surveyor in Victoria.
• Nothing here is legal advice.

What you will not find here

• No testimonials or star ratings.
• No gallery of past jobs. Photographs are illustrative only and do not depict specific jobs. The cottage in the picture is not your neighbour's.
• No promise about the ground. The site class of a block comes from a geotechnical test, not from a web page, and not from the fact that a report for an estate across the river came back Class M.
• No prices for the work. Two houses the same size, one in Mount Street and one in Baranduda, can be priced a long way apart, and the paperwork differs by state. The cost guide explains what moves the number. The only dollar figures on this site are the licensing, contract and insurance thresholds and the penalties the regulators publish.
• No claim that a rule does not apply. Whether an Albury job is exempt development, or whether a Wodonga job needs a planning permit on top of the building permit, depends on the address, and the pages say to ask the certifier, the surveyor or the council rather than telling you it is fine.

What to expect when you make contact

1. You give the town, which side of the river, what the house sits on if you know, what you have noticed inside, and a few photos.
2. The enquiry is passed to a local builder licensed or registered for that state. On the Albury side a heritage check on the address comes early; on the Wodonga side the builder's surveyor checks the overlays.
3. The builder comes back to you with questions about the subfloor and the access, then a price range or a time to look.
4. A subfloor inspection, a written quote, the contract for that state, then either the exempt development check or heritage application in NSW or the building permit and any Road Reserve Works Permit in Victoria, in that order.
5. If a settlement, a building report or a renovation builder's start date is driving it, say so up front. It changes what gets lodged first.

Towns covered

Albury, NSW, Lavington, NSW, North Albury, NSW, South Albury, NSW, East Albury, NSW, West Albury, NSW, Thurgoona, NSW, Jindera, NSW, Howlong, NSW, Corowa, NSW, Wodonga, VIC, West Wodonga, VIC, Baranduda, VIC, Killara, VIC, Bandiana, VIC, Huon Creek, VIC, Tallangatta, VIC, Beechworth, VIC, Yackandandah, VIC and Rutherglen, VIC, along with the smaller settlements between them on both sides of the Murray, from Jindera, Howlong and Corowa on the New South Wales side to Tallangatta and the Indigo Shire towns of Beechworth, Yackandandah and Rutherglen in Victoria.