A few years ago a friend of my dad had a house built for about $150,000. He originally got a pretty wide variation in estimates and if I recall right other builders quoted him $200,000 or more. Say you were to buy a piece of land like he did and hire someone to build a house for you - How much would it cost? Of course the quality of materials and the design of the house will impact the costs a lot.
The price of home building is going to be so variable that its
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) cited average costs for 2011. They say the average construction costs for new homes in 2011 were $184,125 for a 2311 sq ft house. That gives us a general rough average figure. The numbers will vary a lot depending on where you live and the nature of the house.
So how can you find out the cost of building a house in your area? Again, there are too many variables to get a solid number but you could use some basic estimating tools to find a broad range of costs. Below are 3 tools you can use to estimate home building costs. You can then use those 3 tools to give you an estimate of the range of prices for your area.
Method #1
Building-cost.net has a calculator that you can use to estimate home construction costs. They will let you pick a lot of detail about the size of the house, the design, the features the quality of construction and then specify the metro area that the house is in. Then they give all the final results of the cost broken down including the materials, labor, and contractor markup. I first chose the middle level quality of '3' and their figures for a typical 2300 house in my area came out to $391,000 which is very high. New construction 2400 sq ft houses in our area are selling for closer to $300,000 already built. I ran it again and chose quality level of '5' and it came out with a more realistic figure of $217,000 which is closer to reality.
Method #2
Buildingjournal has a simple calculator that estimates costs. They only ask metro area, exterior finish, number of stores, basement, construction grade and the sq ft size. They say a 2300 sq ft house in my area costs about $187,000.
Method #3
One way to figure out the cost of new construction in your area is to look at what new houses sell for. You'll then have to deduct the cost of land. That may be a little harder to figure but you can usually find vacant lots for sale in your city and figure out the land values from that. So for example if a new 2400 sq ft house is selling for $300,000 in my area and a similar size vacant lot here sells for $50,000 then I could estimate the local construction cost to be closer to $250,000. Of course thats not really exact either. A builder may have a higher profit margin or they could even be taking a loss.
Estimating a range of costs
Given the 3 estimating methods above I get figures of $217,000, $187,000 and $250,000. Thats just about $217,000+/- 15%. I could also say the range is $81-$109 / sq ft. I expect this is in the right 'ball park' for the local home building costs.
Photo by ArmchairBuilder.com
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