About Drake 

Drake Homes, also trading as Drake Removal Homes and Drake Character Homes specialise in buying, removing and selling Houses for Removal and Transportable Homes and Buildings. Drake are a family owned and operated business that have been buying, selling and moving homes and buildings for over 37 years. 

Drake also deals in Portable Buildings, Prefabricated or Prefab Buildings, Relocatable Homes, Manufactured or Factory Built Homes, Sheds, Demountable Buildings and basically any Removable Structure.

Drake operate from Loganholme south of Brisbane supplying South East QLD and North East NSW. Drake's house storage site is a prominent landmark on the Pacific Highway at Loganholme 4kms south of the Logan Hyperdome Shopping Centre adjacent to the Logan Motorway interchange, and just north of Beenleigh and the Logan River. Use exit 31 off the Highway to access the service road on the eastern side of the highway.

Drake also assist removal home buyers and sellers throughout the rest of Australia by offering free Private Seller Listings, House Moving and Demolition Contractor Directories, House Assessments and advise.

Click here to see the homes and buildings for sale by Drake. 

Click here for National Private Seller Listings

Click here for House Assessments

Click here for National Contractor Directories

Click here to see prices houses have been selling for

About Types Of Homes Moved and Recycled

Removal Homes

Removal Homes are an affordable alternative to other forms of housing, and contribute significantly to the recycling of building materials by limiting the need for demolition during redevelopment of urban areas.

Removal Homes are conventional secondhand houses not originally designed for relocation but able to be moved to a new site with specialised equipment in the form of hydraulic house removal trailers or transporters and jacking systems unique to the house removal industry.

Removal Houses are usually timber homes like older Queenslander or Colonial homes, but can also be brick veneer, stucco, fibro, or any type of home built on a timber platform floor. Although it is possible to move homes built on concrete slabs on ground, it is usually avoided, due to the costs and practical concerns involved. Many conventionally built homes unfortunately do not suit removal for various reasons and end up being demolished to make way for redevelopment. There is however a large number of homes that can be saved and recycled by removal and Drake are committed to that cause.

House Removal has been around in Australia since the early days of our colonial history when houses and buildings were transported by horse and dray, in some cases quite long distances.

Removal Houses are often transported complete in one section, however in many cases they are separated into two or more smaller sections for transport and rejoined at the final destination. It is quite a sight to see a full size house being carted along a roadway and many a motorist has been greeted with this amazing sight early in the morning amid flashing lights and police escorts.

There are three basic categories used when discussing removal homes.
1. Queenslander and Colonial (Built prior to 1946)
2. Post War (Built between 1946 and 1960)
3. Semi Modern (Built from about 1960 onwards

Transportable or Relocatable Homes

Transportable or Relocatable Homes are houses, homes and buildings built specifically with relocation in mind. Transportable or Relocatable homes are used where there is a possibility or a reason to have the house relocated at some future date. Many people live semi-permanently in Transportable or Relocatable Home Parks throughout Australia. A transportable home or relocatable home can also be an excellent solution for remote areas, e.g. mining communities where the need for housing in the area can change over time. Advantages include being able to sell the building later without having to sell the land, or to reuse the building elsewhere. A transportable house or relocatable house is usually designed to be moved in sections small enough to be transported using conventional vehicles such as ordinary semi-trailers. Others use custom transport methods designed to be practical and cost effective, allowing houses to be moved over long distances at a reasonable cost.

Transportable houses and Relocatable houses can be built on site or in a factory. In many cases, once the building is set up on site it is hard to tell the difference between a house of this type and a conventional house. A Transportable home or Relocatable home can be removed and reinstalled economically on other sites many times in its life cycle.

Manufactured or FactoryBuilt Housing

As the name suggests, manufactured or factory built homes are built in a factory, usually in larger urban centers where labor and infrastructure are available for mass production. Manufactured or Factory built housing has also been referred to as Prefabricated Housing, or Prefab for short, and Prebuilt is another term often used. 

Manufactured Homes are usually built ready for transport and designed to connect direct to onsite services including water, gas and electricity. Some manufactured housing is in kit form which is transported to site in component parts ready to be assembled on site. Kit homes (contrary to the suggestion in the name) still require specialised construction expertise to assemble and can be difficult to complete when compared to a building with its structure already standing. Kit homes are normally designed and built without a thought for moving the building later.

The advantages of a Factory Built home include the ability to provide housing to areas where construction expertise, labor, materials and infrastructure are limited, as found in many remote and regional areas.

Manufactured Housing is one of the fastest growing industries in Australia fuelled by the rising cost of once-off on site custom built housing. The economies of mass production and systemised construction methods employed in Manufactured and Factory built homes are making huge inroads into the housing markets in Australia and overseas, making housing affordable once more for many people.

Demountable Buildings

Demountable buildings are basic forms of portable temporary accommodation. Square and boxy looking, demountable buildings can be far from beautiful in design however they are extremely useful in a wide range of applications as varied as construction site offices to temporary school classrooms.

Many thousands of Australian school kids have and still do spend long and often hot days inside demountable buildings which in most cases were never air-conditioned. Demountables are common on building sites as temporary offices, mess rooms, or storage buildings, among other things.

On farms and stations demountable buildings are used as shearers' quarters and farm hand accommodation. Demountable buildings are even used to house adventurous tourists in remote outback areas providing a welcome alternative to a tent.

Demountable buildings are also used in mining and exploration settings where operations are moved around frequently. 

Like Manufactured and Factory built housing, demountable buildings are generally built in a factory, and then transported by road to where they are to be used.

Demountable buildings fill a need for highly portable, cheap and effective forms of temporary accommodation where the aesthetics are less important than the practical and cost considerations.

Portable buildings are just another form of demountable building and this term is more commonly used for smaller units with uses including temporary toilets and ablution blocks, store rooms, booths, flammable goods storage and chemical goods storage to name a few.