Thinking about building a house. What are y’all seeing on cost per sq? The house would be 3,000-3500 sq ft. Site is paid for, two story, granite countertops, hardwood floors, 12 ft ceilings, etc. I would have a contractor also. Working on plans now. Any suggestions on building?
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- Thread starter HulksStache
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My next house (my retirement home) will be a barndominium. Obliviously not in a neighborhood or municipality.
Probably about $150/sf, but could be much more or much less depending on a whole lot of variables. That's probably not very helpful, but a lot goes into the cost of building including location.
Your square foot price might be pretty high, but with 12 foot ceilings, your cubed foot price might be reasonable
$150-$200 would be my guess based on the info given. Probably not going to be in the low part of that range unless you do the pine or engineered wood floors, relatively basic granite, maximize your heated and cooled space under beam, etc.
As far as suggestions, biggest thing to me would be to decide how long you intend on being in the house. Really impacts what you can do economically. If this isn’t long term, I’d really try to match what is available in the market. In our market, you generally don’t want to build more than a 3k sq ft house for resale. Total number just gets too big for too many of the buyers. 3000 sq ft even requires that a decent chunk of the sq foot be essentially bonus space built out to keep cost per sq for down.
Price per SF is way too hard to determine without geographic info, design, amenities, and a million other factors.
Slab on grade or crawlspace?
20'+ open spans or 16' max?
Custom millwork or commodity mdf trim?
Hollow doors or solid core?
Builder grade windows or premium?
Standard energy efficiency or extra insulation and air sealing?
Concrete driveway or gravel?
2 car garage or 4 car?
The list is limitless...
Your best bet to get a ballpark cost is to find a similar size/quality new construction in your area that's listed for sale by a builder and subtract out the cost of the land. The reality is if you hire a GC and build custom at say cost +10%, you will likely end up spending more than if you bought from a production builder because the markup is the same, but you won't get the economies of scale.
Design smart and spend more of your budget on things that make the house feel nicer (solid core doors, solid wood millwork, quality windows, real wood floors, etc.) Have a good understanding of what your big ticket items (foundation, framing, door/window package, kitchen) are going to cost before you even get started.
One example of a design red flag you mentioned is 12' ceilings. Hopefully you just meant in the living room and/or entry. Because outside of the living area, that's awful tall for most homes under 5000SF for the rest of the first floor. At 12' your smaller rooms are going to look out of proportion. Also, anything over 10' on a load bearing wall is considered a tall wall according to IRC and you get into extra bracing/engineering requirements which is yet another cost. Plus you are adding a huge amount of space to heat and cool and 20% more drywall, brick, sheathing, plumbing length, electrical length, and insulation. All those little things add up real fast.
If you're married, get a good counselor or a lot of whiskey. I've gone through a new build with my wife and it's a nightmare.
Pro tip. Nobody that has built a home has ever complained about having too much garage space.
Slab on grade or crawlspace?
20'+ open spans or 16' max?
Custom millwork or commodity mdf trim?
Hollow doors or solid core?
Builder grade windows or premium?
Standard energy efficiency or extra insulation and air sealing?
Concrete driveway or gravel?
2 car garage or 4 car?
The list is limitless...
Your best bet to get a ballpark cost is to find a similar size/quality new construction in your area that's listed for sale by a builder and subtract out the cost of the land. The reality is if you hire a GC and build custom at say cost +10%, you will likely end up spending more than if you bought from a production builder because the markup is the same, but you won't get the economies of scale.
Design smart and spend more of your budget on things that make the house feel nicer (solid core doors, solid wood millwork, quality windows, real wood floors, etc.) Have a good understanding of what your big ticket items (foundation, framing, door/window package, kitchen) are going to cost before you even get started.
One example of a design red flag you mentioned is 12' ceilings. Hopefully you just meant in the living room and/or entry. Because outside of the living area, that's awful tall for most homes under 5000SF for the rest of the first floor. At 12' your smaller rooms are going to look out of proportion. Also, anything over 10' on a load bearing wall is considered a tall wall according to IRC and you get into extra bracing/engineering requirements which is yet another cost. Plus you are adding a huge amount of space to heat and cool and 20% more drywall, brick, sheathing, plumbing length, electrical length, and insulation. All those little things add up real fast.
If you're married, get a good counselor or a lot of whiskey. I've gone through a new build with my wife and it's a nightmare.
Pro tip. Nobody that has built a home has ever complained about having too much garage space.
Depends on where you are building. Including land, an 1800 SF metal building with 200 amp service and running water is $300/SF where I live. Houses are $600+.
Back in DFW it's now about $300/SF for a good quality production home. It was under $2000 in early 2020.
Slight thread hijack:
I'm at the same point, but wondering hard when will be the best time to build (or go under contract to build) to minimize costs. Thoughts?
If you're planning to locate in Mississippi, keep in mind that some counties have zoning and most zoning ordinances have site plan/architectural review regulations. Many counties do not have such regs, but some do.
I can see the appeal they have for some folks, but how well do they hold re-sale value / accrue value?
2021 would have been ideal.***
Just go for it. Never wait on your primary home, it's not an investment. Get it built. Labor won't come down and materials are at the new bottom. Interest rates are probably a few points higher than they will be, but you can refi your rate.
I always say this and people never seem to believe me. It never gets cheaper. The Fed tells us they want to make things 2% more expensive every year. It's their mission. Then you have the ever increasing cost of land. Finally the one nobody ever knows about... Codes.
Every 3 years the IRC rolls out new building codes that add costs to new construction. It may have to do with water usage, wind loads, electrical panels, whatever, but since 2010, approximately 30% of the increase in new construction costs is due to new increases in design regulations.
Do it now and hold your nose until you can hopefully refi under 5%.
Building Code Cost Increases
This is the most important part, of any home, really, not just your primary/forever/whatever home. It's just something else you hope to pay off, but it doesn't go down in value (most times). If you get lucky with it and it makes you some money, great. But remember, you still have to live somewhere, and unless you downsize at some point in the arc of a story called your life, or move into an RV, you're never going to truly realize that money.
Even all the California people I know who bailed out, ended up literally blowing all their money on stupid sh*t for their new, half-price, twice-the-size house in Texas or wherever.
I assume you're not talking about rental properties and just first/second/vacation homes and I agree 100%.
The best advice I ever got was your home (the one you own and live in) is like a carousel. Once you are on the carousel you can safely move from horse to horse. When you are on the ground it's really dangerous to jump on a horse, you'll likely get hurt. So once you own a home, your in. It doesn't matter if the market goes up or down all the horses are moving the same speed... IE if you're house value drops you can still sell it and buy another without too much pain since that next house is likely cheaper too.
I know a few people who sold in 2020-2021 and thought they'd get off the carousel. They're screwed now. Houses went up 20% or more and rates doubled. Their new mortgage payment will be at least double the old one if they had stayed on the carousel and refied on the same house. And while housing prices have flattened nationally and gone down a little in some areas, 7% vs 3% rates mean affordability is halved. If rates do start to go down, prices will start to climb again...
One guy I know is renting and keeps having to move because his rental houses keep getting sold out from under him. It's really sad.
Never get off the carousel. Not worth it for something as important as your home.
Thanks. I'll mostly be paying cash, so am hoping high rates will lead to depressed prices. So far those hopes have been dashed. Sounds like I'd be better served educating myself on some ways to cut costs within what I want rather than trying to time the housing market.
The high rates have lead to low volume of houses for sale. Nobody wants to trade their 3% mortgage for a 6%, on top of the 20% or more increase in valuations.
I also think people don't realize how much pricing has changed since covid.
I was guessing he's a typical sixpacker (which despite the propaganda that we all live in Illinois and Iowa, I think is still Mississippi, TN, AL in some order. But also, how much of those sq footage costs you are referencing are due to the land cost? Vacation/resort areas are different, and certainly when you get in areas that load a bunch of permitting and review costs into building the costs get sky high, but I would guess typical sunbelt and southeast areas, even in the metros, still don't have cost of construction more than 50% higher than typical MS/AL costs? Is the cost of construction that much more inflated than COL in general?
^^^THIS^^^ My biggest complaint about tract home builders in our area is that they all undersize their garages because apparently buyers in general are too stupid to value garage space. And they all do front facing or courtyard entry garages, so you basically guarantee that the neighborhood is going to look like **** pretty soon because it's hard for a neighborhood to look nice when everybody is parked in the driveway.
And the biggest builder in our area is the worst offender. I'm not talking about just tight garages. I'm talking can't even park an F150 in there if the trailer hitch is in. So we are taking up a lot of otherwise decent land and creating future ghettos. Buyers just don't realize that the tract home neighborhoods that have held their value decently don't have the postage stamp lots and have usable garages.
When you say you are working on a set of plans do you mean full set of engineered plans or just a floor plan? A true set of plans should be completed by an engineer or architect and should include an engineered foundation, HVAC, electrical, framing and so on that conform to current building codes. With just a floor plan your home will depend on the reputation of the contractor to produce a quality product and the $/SF will vary by a large margin.
Build a safe room within the house.
A house like you describe will be a minimum of $180 a foot IF you plan well and hold the line on your budget. That is assuming you are willing to be your own contractor. If not, you will probably be $225 a foot with a solid contractor.
A house like you describe will be a minimum of $180 a foot IF you plan well and hold the line on your budget. That is assuming you are willing to be your own contractor. If not, you will probably be $225 a foot with a solid contractor.
Yep. Was hoping I could find a good deal on a builder/GC since volume is down. So far, no joy. Not that I've been turning over rocks for it.
The big increase has a whole lot to do with labor cost (labor is the single biggest component of single family construction +/- 50%), material costs come in 2nd, and of course land is important as well. If Mississippi didn't have the big labor increase then it's going to be closer to the old costs than the rest of the country for sure.
Lots have actually come back down in most areas as have commodities like lumber and OSB. But everything else has had a cumulative increase of 30-40%. Construction labor went through the roof almost everywhere. Stuff like tile, plumbing components, windows, garage doors, etc are all still higher than giraffe *****.
Thread hijack here, but I am all sweaty palmed about it...
The way to save money on construction going forward is by smart design. We have to quit building 3000 square foot boxes with huge open spans. A smart 2300' is way better than a 3200' box in form and function. Having spent so much time in DFW in construction, I became an expert on the big beige box and I am honestly ashamed of my contributions to the epidemic. Hopefully the OP is building something nice and big which I am all for...
If we grade homes low end, middle, and high end here's an easy way to know where you are... Hollow core interior doors and MDF millwork are low end. Solid core doors and primed finger joint pine or poplar millwork are mid level. Custom wood doors throughout and non poplar hardwood millwork are high end. For my money it's better to go 2300-2500sf mid level than 3200-3500 sf low end unless you have 4 or more kids and actually need 5-6 bedrooms.
Smart design starts with self assessment and then requires an engineer/architect to bring something to reality.
- Do I really need a formal dining room or can that be a flex space that you set a table up in twice a year for Easter and Thanksgiving?
-Do I need a dedicated home office or can I cut out a little nook in the master bedroom for a desk since that bedroom is completely empty from 8-5 M-F?
-Do I need a 20*20 great room that requires an extra $5-10,000 in engineered wood and beams or does 16*16 work with 2 x 12's spanning it?
-Do i need a 10'x10 laundry room and master closet or do I just have so many damn clothes that while I only where 6-7 different shirts, I could go 6 months without ever wearing the same one twice?
-Do I need a 250 sf master bedroom or can we put the sex swing in the closet when we are not using it?
These are the questions one must ask before building a home.
We lost our craftsmanship standards somewhere in the late 60's in most of the country. Even tract homes before then had thoughtful design details and quality workmanship. Those damn Sears and Roebuck Modern Home kits from the 20's and 30's... Masterpieces. Sears built a better house 100 years ago than 99% of today's builders.
Now it's almost entirely about square footage. How ****** can I make it look in the name of still hitting a price point and adding a 300sf home theater room above the garage, a 120sf craft room off the kitchen, and a 175sf dungeon behind the secret door off the master bedroom?
One way to save is to build what you need for now with the infrastructure for what you want later in place now. Small kids or no kids today, but you want a few in the future. Rough out the upstairs bedrooms, but don't finish it until you need it down the road. It's very cheap comparatively vs building smaller and then trying to do an addition that requires all new infrastructure.
And labor is also built into the material prices, somebody gots to make that sh*t
Talked to a builder the other day that said they haven't noticed any impact from high interest rates or building costs. Said there is more gnashing of teeth by owners trying to decide on finishes, but so far he is still having to turn away customers that aren't willing to wait for him to be able to get to them. Said he was expecting to have to add some remodels/additions to his work as people didn't want to lose interest rates but that he just isn't seeing any slowdown yet. This is a custom builder with a good reputation, so maybe the builders that are less established are hungry for work.
I don't think people want thoughtful designs. Or at least they don't understand what they will actually like versus what sells well with tract home builders. We had a builder that was not developing subdivisions but would partner with developers and build out spec homes. They did some 1500 to 2500 sq ft homes that were really well laid out. Garages that actually fit trucks. 2nd and 3rd bedrooms that were decent sized. No wasted space and everything sized for the way people actually live, except they would do dining rooms in some of their larger designs (which in fairness, people still demand despite how little they get used). Also had pretty reasonable quality, which I guess is easier when you're doing 20-25 houses a year instead of 300. I think they were essentially chased out of business by tract home builders that offered a lower price per sq ft by having the too small garage, no porch space if possible although now they are pretty much all doing the back porch and no front porch, cutting corners where ever they can that's not immediately visible, 10x10 bedrooms with tiny closets for everything but the master (which is great for one actual guest bedroom but isn't ideal for a child actually living there), open living/kitchen/eat in spaces that look big unless you realize they have furniture that is smaller than most people utilize.
I will say we didn't design our house very well efficiently. We were smart on some things and I think are in good shape as far as quality that will last, but could have been much more efficient with use of space. There was probably a time where we should have gone back to square one with the design and instead kept bumping stuff around.
It's the soulless embodiment of our society. Take the Battery in Atlanta for example, new, soulless hollow place, to be abandoned in 20 years by the next one.
Thanks, this is helping put things in perspective. That comes out to around $20-30k for a room. I had wanted many extra rooms (library, media room, etc), but do I want them for that price? I can pretty much guarantee though that I'll lose the discussion with the wife over a dining room.
That's my main design problem. 3 kids now (young kids, old father), and the wife wants many more. Bumping around ideas for 3-4 rooms around a communal bonus/entry space, maybe convertible to 6-8 rooms. May have to get those dividing curtains like hotel conference rooms have lol.
We have have a nice "dining room" full of antiques from my wife's family. We also have a very large breakfast/"keeping" room with a country table that will seat six comfortably and eight if we crowd it a bit. This won't help you win your wife over but we rarely use the dining room even on holidays.
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