The Willow Grove Homes director sits down with The Good Builder Podcast to talk about granny flats, growing up in a family business, navigating a male-dominated industry, and what it actually means to be a good builder.
Farah Drake does not describe herself as remarkable. But thirty years in residential construction, a registered builder’s licence, a directorship, a young son, and an expanding national brand suggest otherwise.
Drake is the director of Willow Grove Homes and Granny Flats, a South East Melbourne builder specialising in granny flats, small second dwellings, and multi-generational housing. She joined The Good Builder Podcast for a wide-ranging conversation that touched on family legacy, the evolution of planning laws, what it took to earn respect on site as a woman in the nineties, and why she still considers building homes a genuine privilege.
What came through clearly is that Drake’s longevity in the industry is not accidental. It is the product of values she has held consistently across three decades of building.
It Started With a Family Business and a Hole Full of Concrete
Drake’s entry into construction was not a calculated career move. Her father ran a building company, and she came on to help while studying at university.
“I finished school and he needed help,” she explained. “I was doing uni and still working with him. And then he had somebody else working with him for a bit and they actually passed away. I was wanting to come back into the business and he said, well, I need a hand and you know the business.”
She joined in an administrative role and expected to leave eventually. She never did.
The moment construction really took hold was when her father asked her to help on site while he was injured. “I was down a hole in concrete, having the time of my life. I loved it. When I do get on site, it doesn’t happen as much these days, but when I do, I’m just like piggy in poo.”
It was not the language of someone performing a role. It was someone describing their natural habitat.
What It Was Like Being a Woman on Site in the Nineties
Drake is measured when she talks about the challenges she faced as a woman in construction, but she does not paper over them. The industry she entered thirty years ago was different to the one that exists today.
“When you think about thirty years ago, the older generation, they did look at me as a little girl in the office who didn’t know a single thing. Comments like, maybe we should go speak to the man of the business. Things like that. Really derogatory, really putting down. You just had to be like, okay, that’s what’s going to be your life. And you just try and move through it.”
She recounted being approached at a hardware store by a man who told her she looked as comfortable there as he did in a kitchen store. “That was just how people saw things. You could not get away with saying something like that to a woman in Bunnings these days.”
When she started getting on site and taking on more responsibility, attitudes shifted. “The boys started seeing me a bit differently. You gain respect, but it takes time. As a female, I’ve had to work harder to earn that respect.”
Her father’s approach helped. He did not shield her from the harder parts of the industry. “He was like, well, you’re more than capable of dealing with it.” In hindsight, Drake sees that as exactly the right call.
“You gain respect, but it takes time. As a female, I’ve had to work harder to earn that respect.”
The Niche Nobody Was Paying Attention To
Willow Grove’s focus on granny flats and multi-generational housing was not an obvious play when Drake and her father began moving in that direction. It was a market they understood before most others did.
“We couldn’t compete with the big builders in the volume home space,” she explained. “So we sort of really honed in on this niche. There weren’t many builders in that market area.”
What drew Drake deeper into the space was not market research. It was the clients.
“You’d sometimes have a couple of hours go by sitting down with a potential client, listening to their life story. From there you sort of go, okay, this is something really special.”
The clients building granny flats are often families navigating significant life transitions. Ageing parents moving closer to adult children. Young adults unable to afford separate homes. Grandparents wanting to be part of grandchildren growing up. Drake describes being involved in those moments as a privilege. Not a transaction.
“We don’t build houses, we build homes. It’s so much more than just the bricks and mortar.”
She attended the funeral of a former client’s father. She stops to check in with clients long after construction finishes. She describes the hand-over moments, when families see the completed home for the first time, as ones that regularly involve hugs.
“There’s nothing quite like it. It’s not about getting the sale in.”
The Planning Changes That Opened Up the Market
The Victorian regulatory environment around secondary dwellings has shifted significantly in recent years, and Willow Grove has had to move with it.
Until December 2023, the options for placing a fully self-contained structure in a residential backyard in Victoria were tightly constrained. Dependent persons units, the traditional granny flat, came with strict occupancy rules. Tenants had to be genuinely dependent on the main household occupants. The structure had to be relocatable. It could not be rented out as an investment.
If a homeowner wanted something that could eventually generate rental income, they needed to pursue a full second dwelling permit or a subdivision, both of which carried significant time and cost implications, and were not always achievable on smaller lots.
In December 2023, the Victorian government introduced small second dwellings. These allow homeowners to build a structure of up to sixty square metres, inclusive of all roofed areas including verandas, without car parking requirements and with no restrictions on occupancy.
“It’s opened the market up. It’s made it a lot easier to put something in your backyard that you can house mum or dad, kids, and then down the track, get a return on investment.”
Drake notes that Willow Grove’s core business remains in the dependent persons unit space, building for families looking after elderly relatives. But the broader regulatory shift has expanded the conversation and brought new clients to the table.
“We don’t build houses, we build homes. It’s so much more than just the bricks and mortar.”
The Tiny Homes Question Builders Need to Understand
The growth of tiny homes in Australia, particularly in Queensland, is reshaping conversations about what constitutes a secondary dwelling. Drake is thoughtful on the distinction, having spoken on the topic at the Tiny Homes Expo.
The fundamental difference is regulation. Tiny homes built on trailers are classified differently to permanent structures. They are technically caravans under Australian law, which means the National Construction Code does not apply in the same way. This is a significant gap that Drake believes the industry is still working through.
“There is a massive movement up in Queensland with tiny homes. At the end of the day, they are a caravan. So different rules apply.”
There are builders working responsibly within the tiny homes space, doing their best to align with building code principles even where they are not strictly required. But there are others cutting corners, and Drake does not hide her concerns.
“There’s the cheap ones that possibly just slap bang them together. And then when we talk about granny flats, we have to adhere to proper regulations, Australian standards, the National Construction Code. We’re tied to the ground.”
The regulatory ambiguity creates risk for consumers who may not understand the difference between a registered builder constructing a permanent structure and an unregistered operator selling a trailer-mounted unit through a marketplace listing.
Running a Business Is a Different Skill Set to Building a Home
One of the more candid parts of Drake’s conversation on the podcast was about the difficulty of separating the builder from the business director. The two roles pull in opposite directions, and she has had to learn to navigate that tension over years.
“I love being on site and I don’t get to do it as much these days. But it’s really hard being a director. You’ve got to extract yourself from the everyday workings of the business so that you can work on the business rather than in it. And that is one of the toughest things to do.”
She works with a business coach to maintain that separation, though she admits the demands of running an active building operation make it easy to fall back into operational mode when strategic work is what the business actually needs.
She also raises something rarely spoken about directly: the emotional demands of managing a small team. “I am always a psychologist with my team. If somebody’s having a crap day, I want to know why and what I can do to help them. That is so important.”
The relationships within the business reflect the same values that shape client relationships. Her project manager Mark has been with Willow Grove for more than twenty years. Subcontractors have worked with the business across multiple decades. Drake attributes that retention to culture, not just pay.
“Our guys want to be part of something bigger than just what they do.”
Women in Construction: More Voices, More Work to Do
Drake is an HIA Women in Building ambassador and one of the judges on the HIA awards program. She speaks with real clarity about the progress that has been made in creating space for women in the industry, and equal clarity about what remains unfinished.
“We want to get mentoring for women in building out of the ground. We always need to do more.”
The biannual HIA Women in Building lunches she attends draw around four hundred people, including men who come to show support. She finds them energising. But she knows that lunch events alone are not the mechanism for structural change.
Drake’s own presence in the industry carries weight she does not always advertise. She is a registered builder and company director who has been building homes since the nineties, raised a child while running the business, and is now expanding nationally. She is precisely the kind of role model the industry needs more of.
What Comes Next for Willow Grove
The business is now moving into Queensland, with a partner builder based in Brisbane taking on work in the South East Queensland corridor. Drake describes the expansion as a year in the making, and emphasises that the partner was chosen because of aligned values, not just capacity.
“We’re aligned on how we feel about building, providing that really good quality product, listening to people’s story, providing that connection. He’s been in the industry for years.”
If the Queensland expansion works as intended, South Australia and New South Wales are next on the horizon. Drake frames this less as a franchise model and more as a network of builders who share the same principles around quality and client relationships.
What Makes a Good Builder
At the end of every episode of The Good Builder Podcast, guests are asked the same question. Drake’s answer was characteristically direct.
“You’ve got to have business acumen. You’ve got to have oversight with something as simple as cash flow. You’ve got to care about your product. You’ve got to care about your clients. And you’ve got to care about your team. I don’t have my team around me, I don’t have a business.”
She paused, then added: “You’ve got to give a shit, basically.”
Three decades, thousands of homes, and the same answer most good builders eventually arrive at. Not the technical excellence. Not the licence or the accreditations. The care.
Listen to the full conversation with Farah Drake on The Good Builder Podcast. Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter and find trusted industry professionals in the TGB Community Directory.
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