Cost to build your own home?

[shibaura_4043]

I am getting ready to list my house in a month or so. Once it sells I plan to cash flow my new house on other land I've already purchased. I really think I can build a nice 2500 sqft house for $50-55 p/sqft. Am I being realistic or am I in for a rude awakening? I ask because if its not feasible to build for $50-55 p/ sqft Then I probably won't list my house this year to in order to capture more equity in a year or two. I don't want to have a mortgage on the new house. I plan to be my own GC and do several things myself( plumbing, electrical, painting, Etc.) I will sub out getting it "in the dry". I've done a couple remodels but not a full new construction build. Also, I will have some professional help as my wife's dad owns a construction company specializing in trim, cabinets and such, but does have experience framing too. I'm sure a couple guys on the forum have had the same ambitious attitude I have and I look forward to hearing about their experience relating to cost and timeline. Thanks in advance.

 

[Billrog]

I'm not aware of any of the costs in your area but I built the house I'm living in now 25 years ago doing everything myself and the cost was $61.50 sq. ft. Another friend who's a builder when I inquired 2 years ago what it cost him to build his own house which was a little more extravagant than mine told me $152.00 a sq. ft. But not like myself he contracted out most of the work.

 

[TnAndy]

It can be done, but there are a lot of variables in that. Going up is cheaper than spreading out. Siding is cheaper than brick. You (or your wife) can go nuts on bathrooms and kitchens, or you can hold the line at 'reasonable'......those types of variables. You can spend $20,000 on kitchen cabinets in the blink of an eye.....or you can build better ones for $2k if you have the skills and machinery to do so.

I built some rental houses a few years back, this one for $38/ft. 1800sf, 4bd, 2 1/2 bath. I did all the labor except driveway concrete, heat pump, and upstairs carpet. I built the cabinets (huge savings), made the door/window/base moldings...red oak.... ($1,000 small molding machine) cut the floor, roof, wall framing out of white pine on my Woodmizer sawmill.

This one right after, for $45/ft....nearly the same, except I bought roof and floor trusses...wanted clear span in the lower garage section....and the driveway was a lot longer.

Kitchen in #2:

 

[shibaura_4043]

Thanks for your input Billrog. I'm in Texas and I'm fairly confident materials are cheaper here than in your area. Tnandy, I'm impressed with your two projects especially the cost, we planned to build a two story so hopefully I'll save some dollars there. What was the timeline on your builds?

 

[dalroo]

Shibaura, glad you started this thread.

I am kind of in same boat, but probably out a couple of years waiting on kids to get out of high school. We live in the City, but have land between Brownwood and Brady where we plan to build our "last" home. My hope is to take a significant amount of equity out of city house and build debt free on the ranch. I've been researching, and everyone tells me to plan for $150-200 psf. Granted, I will not be doing much of the work on my own, but that seems overly expensive to me. We want a Texas Ranch with stone, metal roof, stained concrete, and wrap around porch. With my already built 1,500' barn, I don't think we need to go much bigger that 2200 or 2300 sf, but at $200 psf, that will be a huge investment. Maybe I am not realistic, but $100-125 just seems more on par with what I see in other NICE houses. What am I missing?

 

[ustmd]

Shibaura

While not an expert, I will still offer an opinion. $50-$55/sq ft cost will be tight.

There are a lot of variables--especially on finish costs and labor costs for any subs you use (for example, it is real easy to spend $5/sq ft on materials for your finished floor). Those are the elements that will rack up the cost in a hurry. Basic materials (lumber etc) will not vary significantly from region to region.

Also, how much time do you have? Not only for the stuff you will do yourself, but the work you will sub out. I see you at in Texas. Around Austin right now, with the house boom, it is almost impossible to get access to a good sub as they are all tied into GCs who are scheduled out for the next 6-12 months. For example, I am getting a standing seem metal roof put on the house (26 squares, uncomplicated roof line). Every reputable roofing company quoted me a 2-3 month lead time from the day I signed the contract and gave the deposit (this was in January). All of them had the same response--business was good.

 

[shibaura_4043]

Shibaura, glad you started this thread. I am kind of in same boat, but probably out a couple of years waiting on kids to get out of high school. We live in the City, but have land between Brownwood and Brady where we plan to build our "last" home. My hope is to take a significant amount of equity out of city house and build debt free on the ranch. I've been researching, and everyone tells me to plan for $150-200 psf. Granted, I will not be doing much of the work on my own, but that seems overly expensive to me. We want a Texas Ranch with stone, metal roof, stained concrete, and wrap around porch. With my already built 1,500' barn, I don't think we need to go much bigger that 2200 or 2300 sf, but at $200 psf, that will be a huge investment. Maybe I am not realistic, but $100-125 just seems more on par with what I see in other NICE houses. What am I missing?

I have a friend who is building a 3700 living sqft house 4800 total sqft, east of Dallas, Tx. It's costing him $94 p/sqft on total sqft and $122 per sqft living. That's full custom house with a general contractor and subbing everything out. I think $125 a ft a reasonable estimate on your part.

 

[shibaura_4043]

Shibaura While not an expert, I will still offer an opinion. $50-$55/sq ft cost will be tight. There are a lot of variables--especially on finish costs and labor costs for any subs you use (for example, it is real easy to spend $5/sq ft on materials for your finished floor). Those are the elements that will rack up the cost in a hurry. Basic materials (lumber etc) will not vary significantly from region to region. Also, how much time do you have? Not only for the stuff you will do yourself, but the work you will sub out. I see you at in Texas. Around Austin right now, with the house boom, it is almost impossible to get access to a good sub as they are all tied into GCs who are scheduled out for the next 6-12 months. For example, I am getting a standing seem metal roof put on the house (26 squares, uncomplicated roof line). Every reputable roofing company quoted me a 2-3 month lead time from the day I signed the contract and gave the deposit (this was in January). All of them had the same response--business was good.

Thanks for the response, I work a rotating shift and I'm usually off work 2 weeks consecutively in a 6 week rotation, so I have some time but I am a little concerned how long the project will take me if I do a lot of the labor myself. I often hear from friends and family "you have too many irons in the fire" so balancing everything could prove difficult. I plan to budget shop for things like flooring, countertops and fixtures, but I won't settle on cheap builder grade material so this is also a concern of mine when trying to stay below $55 per ft. I guess if subs are tied up then I'd be waiting regardless at least I'd have the option to do it myself if I wanted to speed any delays up.

 

[ustmd]

Something else for you to try to see if your cost estimate is close. Go look around at new track houses in your area to see if there is one close to what you want--especially KB Homes. KB Homes is a publicly traded company and releases their financial data. They separate out revenue and costs by area-land, financial services, and construction. According to their financials, KB is making ~18% operating margin on construction, so their cost is right around 80% of the sale price. Granted those costs include stuff you are going to do yourself, but it may be offset that I am sure KB is getting great pricing on materials and labor.

 

[Gary Fowler]

My home has full brick exterior, marble and hardwood flooring, a 12x40 covered patio with 2 elevations, a 10x20 front porch and an oversized 30x30 garage. The home is 2308 sq. feet of heated area and total under roof is 3738. The contract bid was for $189,000 which equals to $81.88 PSF heated or just $50.56 PSF under roof. The contractor put in his bid allowances for things like roofing material, kitchen appliances, flooring, exterior doors and windows, interior doors, lighting and a few other things. We did all of the buying for kitchen appliances, windows and door and flooring where we saved $$$$$ on the bidded cost with exception of appliances. We decided to go with high end appliances where we spent the total allowance on a Pro model double oven and range and got the highest quality of everything else. We spent a bit more money on upgrading the kitchen with custom built cabinets by a local cabinet maker for $14,000. I think we just about equaled the over run on some items by the savings on others so total cost was not much if any over the contracted cost. We never figured up the total cost of all the stuff we bought like ceiling fans, all the kitchen appliances, all the light fixtures and bulbs (we did a lot of LED lights) all the marble and hardwood flooring plus misc stuff like some wiring and exterior speakers that contractors installed for no additional charge.
You can save a few bucks if you shop for your components yourself and just let the contractor do the foundation, framing, roofing and interior walls and doors. By shopping around we got faucets for bathrooms at less than half of what Lowes was selling the same brand for. We did buy windows and doors at Lowes so not everything was online shopped. We imported our flooring from Houston and even after paying for shipping it was less than half what it would have cost locally.

We did absolutely non of the labor but just elected to try and beat the contracted cost for components while getting the best quality. I think we did a very good job.

I forgot to mention that I did the design myself. I sketched out the floor plan that I wanted then I got a local architect to draw it to scale and place the windows. It took a couple of tries to get it the way we wanted but then I gave the plans to my contractor for the estimate. It cost me $200 to have the plans drawn including the revisions which included flipping the house end to end as we decided to come into the garage from the east rather than the west as originally intended.