re: Building a home and just received the first bid.

I think thats suoer high, but I'm also only familiar with new construction homes being sold by builders. They are going to put less expensive material where you may not even notice. As in cheaper flooring (but still looks good), cheaper stone counters, hardware, etc.. if you are building yourself and oicking out each material that you want, you are probably going to puck out alightly more expensive things. Just picking out a slightly more expensive flooring could add $2 a square foot compared to spec houses being thrown up by contractors and there are tons of places you are probably asking for slighly better than "construction grade". It is probably high, but a custom house will always be higher unless you really know where to cut back and save on materials. My cousin is buidling a house the same size as mine. He is going all custom. His house is 200k more than my house. My price includes lot and his does not! I think I'm in a much nicer neighborhood as well.

We're building right now through a general contractor and all I've been hearing is how much construction costs have been rising recently.

We're just outside of Birmingham, so I don't know if this helps but we're at around $128 sq ft for 2800 living + basement and 3 car garage.

Cabinets going in as we speak

quote:

---

The problem is subs. Had one framer actually bid a job at 9 a foot

---

quote:

---

I'm also assuming you are building in Clairmont or something close to it. This would mean you can't put cheap finishes on the house. $155/ft isn't cheap, but I don't think it's ridiculous either.

---

His numbers don't include the lot price because I bought separate last fall. My $178 sq ft includes my lot costs which I have to figure in as total cost to build even though it's paid off.

I'm going through the process right now in Covington....

The underbeam SF is what you should have had preliminarily priced.

Under beam is going for $100-150 SF (med\high end finishes possible.) in Covington.

So a 3900sf house at $120 per SF would be $468,000.00.

I was looking at houses that had big porches and out door spaces and realized I can't afford them, but it took me awhile to get to that point. And it took even longer for my wife to get that point. So we are now looking into a smaller house that is designed to utilize the space the best.

Unfortunately housing prices are high bc the market is good and contractors aren't hungry. At least that's how I see it.

Edit:

Your first price came in at $92.35 per SF under beam which is probably about 120 if you include all the things your picking up.

quote:

---

I'm going through the process right now in Covington.... The underbeam SF is what you should have had preliminarily priced. Under beam is going for $100-150 SF (med\high end finishes possible.) in Covington. So a 3900sf house at $120 per SF would be $468,000.00. I was looking at houses that had big porches and out door spaces and realized I can't afford them, but it took me awhile to get to that point. And it took even longer for my wife to get that point. So we are now looking into a smaller house that is designed to utilize the space the best. Unfortunately housing prices are high bc the market is good and contractors aren't hungry. At least that's how I see it. Edit: Your first price came in at $92.35 per SF under beam which is probably about 120 if you include all the things your picking up.

---

I'm a builder on the Northshore and this is the most accurate info in the thread.