Cost of building home on own lot

[barrelhorses]

Does anyone have any idea what it might cost per square foot to build a house on a piece of ground that I already own? I'm in southwest Ohio.

I'm thinking about a 3 or 4 bed/2 bath ranch, full basement, oversized 2 car garage. I would probably go with brick exterior.

[Hook'em Horns!]

Originally Posted by barrelhorses

Does anyone have any idea what it might cost per square foot to build a house on a piece of ground that I already own? I'm in southwest Ohio.

I'm thinking about a 3 or 4 bed/2 bath ranch, full basement, oversized 2 car garage. I would probably go with brick exterior.

Have you considered Straw Bale construction as an option? Straw Bale House Construction & Natural Home Building

[KINGTUT]

I would figure 175 t0 200 hundred a foot.

[dc3655]

I'm not sure about Ohio, but I know that my cousin's own their own land and they just had a contractor build them a nice house for $100/sqft for a 2200 sq.ft house. With the slowdown in the market, most contractors are getting pretty desperate for work.

[barrelhorses]

A couple of years ago, I was hearing $125/sq. ft. for local residential building, but that number included the land. I know that a lot of local contractors have experienced significant slow downs.

[roofeditor]

Originally Posted by barrelhorses

A couple of years ago, I was hearing $125/sq. ft. for local residential building, but that number included the land. I know that a lot of local contractors have experienced significant slow downs.

With no unions, lots of Mexicans, 365 days a year good weather, ON SLAB you can build in the $100-$150 range depending on the quality of construction and bells and whistles. All tile floors, metal roof, granite counter tops, real wood cabinets, high end appliances and you will be in the $150 range. Also if you hire an architect to do the drawings and a la de da builder that thinks his poop doesn't stink you can go well over $200 a foot.

As a note: I find that builders that charge $200-$300 a foot for luxury construction often end up with me dragging them to court as much as if not more than the track home builders. Paying more doesn't assure you better.

Shop around!

[SmokeyWren]

Originally Posted by barrelhorses

I'm thinking about a 3 or 4 bed/2 bath ranch, full basement, oversized 2 car garage. I would probably go with brick exterior.

For my 2,600 sq foot ranch on a slab with a 3-car attached garage, 12 years ago the brick facade siding cost around $10,000 more than painted masonite lap siding would have cost. That sounds like a lot, but it was less than $4 per sq ft, so I think it will be a good investment when my kids sell the house after they throw dirt in my face.

Basements are cheap square footage, but they are not free. A "full" basement under a 2,000 sq ft ranch will cost a bunch of thousand dollars more than a slab or partial basement. Consider doing what one of my previous houses had: A partial basement. Basement under the main part of the house, but not under any wings. So if you have an "L" or "T" shaped ranch-style design, putting a slab under part of the house could save you a bunch of thousands of dollars. And you'll still have as big a basement as most two-story houses would have.

Design can play a big part on cost per sq ft. In my case, I went with max sq ft and minimum expensive frills - other than the brick siding. I have 100 percent ceramic floor tile, but my 2,600 sq ft of floor tile was the least-expensive available at around $1 per sq ft. So I don't have any cathedral ceilings. All cabinets are the put-it-together-yourself cabinets from Home Depot or Lowes, but with real oak doors. Bathroom countertops are all laminate, i.e., Formica. Kitchen countertops are the same ceramic tile as on the floor. All windows are the normal dual-pane stuff you can buy at Lowes for less than $100 each. Faucets in the bathroom and kitchen and laundry room and sink in the garage are the plain Delta brand for less than $100 each for the lavatory faucets and less than $200 each for the sink faucets. Interior doors are the cheapest they had. Exterior doors are plain steel doors with half dual-pane glass. All plumbing fixtures are ordinary - nothing fancy other than a Jacussi-style bathtub in the guest bathroom, and a urinal and bidet and seperate shower stall in the master suite. All built-in shelving in boolcases and closets are 3/4" painted particle board instead of the more expensive real wood.

I did all the work myself except concrete slab, septic tank, HVAC, and bricks, plus a few days for a carpenter crew to stand up the walls and install the roof trusses. I designed the engineered roof trusses, but had them built by a pro truss company. It took me about 18 months of 7 days a week doing nothing but building a house and going to the stores 25 miles away to buy more materiels and supplies. If you're not retired, you probably don't have that option to have that much fun for 18 months.

I already had the 9-acre lot, and the other materials and minimal labor and pros I hired cost me a total of about $45 per sq ft in 1995/6. Today my insurance company insists that it would cost over $120 per sq ft to replace it.

But go with more expensive floor tile or carpet, cathedral ceilings, better windows and doors and plumbing fixtures and faucets and light fixtures and countertops and such, and the bid jumps up in a hurry. Add all that stuff plus a full basement and mine would probably cost you over $200 per sq ft today.

So as roofeditor indicated, count on a minimum of $100 per sq ft if you have absolutely no frills and no basement. About $150 per sq ft with normal upgrades to make it a medium-priced house in a normal neighborhood of 2,000-sq-ft homes. But count on $200 per sq ft if your wife insists on all the frills.

One thing I learned with my design. I built more walk-in master closet that I thought anyone could ever need for a couple of old folks = 76 sq ft. But it's not nearly big enough. Next time I'd make it a minimum of 100 sq ft so Darling Wife will have room for all her stuff.

Also, remember that a ranch-style house costs more per sq ft than a two-story. You can add an elevator to a two-story design and still get by with less cost per sq ft than a ranch-style that doesn't have any stairs (except basement stairs if you have a basement). Plus, an elevator can serve the basement as well as the upstairs bedrooms, so you can design the laundry room into the basement instead of your wife requiring precious sq ft for a laundry room on the bedroom floor.

I love my big ranch-style house on a slab, but I could live with a design that had a basement downstairs and the extra bedrooms upstairs - as long as the master suite was on the ground floor and there was an elevator to get old folks up and down without having to climb stairs. I had one similar to that once upon a time. 2,400 sq ft 4-bedroom two-story, with the master suite on the ground floor. But it was in San Antonio back around 1980, with no basement and no elevator. The kids were big enough to maintain their own rooms and their bathroom up stairs, so Darling Wife never had to climb those stairs.

[NickKent]

I'm getting ready to put an addition on my house. 1800-2000 square foot addition, and I'm hoping to not go over $200/ft2. I'm an hour north of Boston near the ocean. I should also add that my poop doesn't stink

[short_stuff]

Barrelhorses,
Also check in to SIP panels (structural Insulated panels). I checked them out last fall at one of the home shows, and I think that will be the route I go when I add the 900 foot addition to my lake house. Their price sheet for a 2560 sft house (sides and roof) shows $24900. And they can usually put the house together on your slab, on blocks, or basement walls, in about a day to 2 days (depending on how complex the floor plan is). SIP's are panels (up to 28 feet long) with a layer of Styrofoam sandwiched between 2 layers of OSB. So, you can get the ceilings already insulated at an R-28 or R-34 insulation rating. A 10 inch thick insulated floor has an R-64 rating. If you're intertested, check out Precision Panel - Advanced Framing System - SIPS - Structural Insulated Panels, and the floor plans at New Frontier Building Systems - SIP Kits, Hi-Velocity HVAC and HEPA Air Exchangers . I tore my old garage down over the weekend to make room for the new addition, so I"m getting closer to "git'er done".

short_stuff

[SmokeyWren]

When my nephew, the architech, built his new house a coupla years ago, he used pre-assembled foam exterior wall forms about a foot thick, and had concrete poured into the cavity. That's called "insulated concrete forms", or ICF. That makes for a well-insulated and hell-for-strong house. His is a two-story with basement near Lubbock, where basements are rare, but he found a contractor that knew how to include a basement in the foundation.

ICF = Home | Contact Us

ICF construction is probably not a good idea for DIY, but if you can find a contractor that would pour the foundation/basement and build the exterior walls, you could probably do the rest of it yourself.

[MarkEkberg]

Are all you guys paying this much for houses????

When I left Boise ID in 2001 you could get new stick construction for $75 sf turn key construction.

Going off straight numbers @75 a sf a 2000sf home is 150K. If you are a modest person I think you can come in close to that.

I just got done doing a basement this last summer. It was 15K for 800sf with extra 2" on wall thickness.

If you are willing to do work yourself, or buy a kit house you can save serious amounts of labor. Look into having someone frame it out and you finish the inside?

[newtodieseling]

Originally Posted by dc3655

I'm not sure about Ohio, but I know that my cousin's own their own land and they just had a contractor build them a nice house for $100/sqft for a 2200 sq.ft house. With the slowdown in the market, most contractors are getting pretty desperate for work.

Just built a house here in NW IA for $110 a square foot; that's everything. You can spend as much or as little as you want; all depends on what you pick, it really isn't the construction labor that is so high, it's the material costs.

[eagleeye]

I am on the downward spiral of finishing up my 3800 sq. ft. home. It is 5 bedroom, 5 bath, large kitchen, large living room, office, and huge bonus room. I am coming in around the $125 per sq. ft. area. It also has a 2800 sq. ft. basement with a 9' x 48' walk in vault with 10" concrete walls and ceiling. The garage is about 1200 sq. ft. I went custom on about everything from the cabinets to the master walk in shower to my wives 12' x 12' walk in closet, she did let me buy a new dresser. The only things I subed were the foundation, insulation, drywall and brick. I did hire a frame crew to help me get it under roof quickly, but they were off the payroll when we finished laying the last of the 80 squares of shingles. This is our dream home and hope it stays in the family for generations to come. If I had hired all the work to be done it would have been around the $175 per sq. ft. neighborhood. Which is about what the insurance company said is replacement cost. I just wonder why the tax assessor thinks it was twice this amount???

[eagleeye]

Originally Posted by newtodieseling

Just built a house here in NW IA for $110 a square foot; that's everything. You can spend as much or as little as you want; all depends on what you pick, it really isn't the construction labor that is so high, it's the material costs.

Material costs right now are actually at about a 15 year low with the exception of copper and anything petroleum based, like pvc or shingles, even still, they are not overly prohibitive. Good reputable labor, while they (contractors) may be slow and hungry, they still have high overhead like work comp insurance and fuel to name a few. Another plus to building now is mortgage rates are coming down and I think will continue to do so for awhile.

[WormDrowner]

I remember back home in Texas in the 1970's, I knew a few folks who had Jim Walters Homes. Not fancy by any means, but livable.

Jim Walter Homes : Affordable Homes Built on your Land with No Money Down Mortgage Financing