New construction house advice

Gallman Construction out of Walker. Danny Gallman is a great contractor. One of the better ones around. Will build your home in 3-5 months weather depending.

No advice on a contractor, but if it were me, I'd get the best quality finishes I could afford since it will only cost more to upgrade in the future.

And if this is going to be your forever home, do it as right as your pocket can handle.

We started our build in October of 22. We essentially built our house for $191/SQFT.
That includes the cost of our lot.

If you take out the cost of our lot we built our house for $145/SQFT. You can build a fantastic house for that price for square foot. We have thermador/sub zero appliances, quartzite, real hard wood floors and even old real cypress ceilings for our dining room and our office. Indoor antique brick pavers and brick arches.

We contracted everything out ourselves to save the money as this was our forever home too. I recommend compound construction and design. Jeigh is the owner and has a ton of experience with "Custom" homes.

Put a roof on it that you will always be able walk on with upper age.

Congrats on the decision to build. I think it is a good one. Especially for a young family.

We broke ground in October 2021 and moved in July 2022. Here are the things you should plan for...

1- Costs- Likely $200 a sft (house only) for moderate finishes. Things like brick (exterior) is difficult to change. Choose wisely. Please reconsider if you want to paint brick white. I think it is a fad and will look dingy in time.

2- Design- Unless you are looking for something very specific or different, I would find a tried and true plan off the internet instead of an architect. This will save you about $4000.00. Madden has nice plans. There are others. They all have been build and live in tested.

3- Get financing lined up. The deed of the property you are planning to build on has to be in a position for the lender to work with. I am not sure how that works but they likely won't lend you money to build on someone elses land. Not sure though.

4-Landscaping and lawn can be done by the builder but will cost you an extra 10% minimum. Maybe you set aside 10K for flower beds and some sod/seed for the yard.

5- Builders will never eat cost over runs. They may say they will with a turn key price but... I seriously doubt that. If they do, they are bidding everything high to counterbalance the project losses. We went with a cost plus 10% builder. I loved the experience. We went 25K over budget but... some of that was our choice to upgrade and materials/labor fluctuations. I have every invoice for our house build and know specifically where every dollar we spent went. If you go cost plus, make sure the builder has access to reasonable subs and can get materials at a better price than we can.

That's about it. Good luck.

Many times, a builder is only as good as the subs he uses. I had great subs, never had to check on them. They knew what I wanted and what I wanted done. Paid after the jobs complete.

When using a builder, always hold back some money, I’d rather write 100 checks, than one. But that’s me.

I could tell a number of stories.

figure out all your potential add ons and bite the bullet all at once. Like if you want/need a shop/storage? Planning on an outdoor kitchen? fireplace? swimming pool? etc.

go ahead and get what you want drawn up initially and go for it at once versus staging it years at a time down will be better than retrofitting in my opinion.