re: How much does it cost to build a custom home where you live?

Building a house always sounds like a nightmare. There are enough houses already built that I’d avoid that hassle.

1.6 mill

Thibodaux area. 250sqft living, 145sqft under roof. That’s quoted 3 months ago. 2400 sq home.

High end finishes, does not include land.

We paid approximately $106K per square foot for our existing lake house and acerage that we bought in 2022. It needed a LOT of work, but it was worth it. It was an absolute steal considering what the house and property are like now. The house is really high end quality and on a gorgeous large lake lot, but it was neglected over 20 years and had some major issues. I mean you shouldn't flush a first floor toilet, walk down into the finished basement and see water pouring through the ceiling and through a flourescent light fixture in a laundry room during the showing. There were even old water stains in that ceiling, so the issue wasn't new.

There were plenty of issues with the house that made the cost very low, primarily water leaking into the finished basement through two walls, black mold and more. There were some large custom windows that needed replacing, some concrete that needed raising, some plumbing and brick work, major overgrown landscaping and more. I fixed the water issues (leaking main water line just outside the house and crushed underground gutter downspout PVC pipes). I also easily fixed the mold issue after the water leaks were fixed. There were a lot of other problems and I fixed a good bit of them myself outside of some work better done by contractors.

Everything I saw wrong with the house, I knew I could fix and a lot by myself, so I was happy to see everything wrong to get a great price and scare off competition for the house. I told my wife that the property is incredible and worth more alone without the house in my opinion, and that it was a great house after about $100K to fix it. She agreed and later the Home Inspector agreed as well.

After spending a couple of years and about $100K for fixes and upgrades, the house is now pretty much like a resort and worth at least triple what we paid. Even when it closed and still needing all of the work done, my agent asked me a week afterwards if we wanted to immediately sell it for double what we paid as another potential buyer found out about it from the sellers and wanted it badly but were too late. and would pay double. We said absolutely not.

If you find an existing house in the right location that is a Picasso in need of a lot of work, sometimes that can be the way to go if you can put in the time and effort.

$180/sq ft in 2019, when we first started. Ended up being $210 with upgrades/changes, during Covid when labor and material shortages were extreme.

In 2021 when I last spoke to my contractor, he was getting contracts for custom homes for $300-$330. I can’t imagine paying $750-$900k for a 2500 sq ft house, but I have a friend that lives in one. Blows my mind.

ETA: $180/sq ft included the land. $145/sq ft for structure. Back in 2019

Friend,

Mother bought an old farm near Elberta, Alabama in 2020. For 100-150 acres, she spent approximately $700,000, which sounds like a lot, but someone offered her over double that just four years later before construction of the new complex.

She hired an architect and a contractor to build a 5,000 sq foot building and it was about 525 per square foot and took 1.5 years. Owing to God’s grace and some very wise stock market decisions over the last decade, she spared few expenses. Included were custom cabinets and carpentry throughout made of rift cut white oak and walnut. The woodwork was the single factor that made the build jump from a 350/sq foot project, which it may have been if she had gone the RTA route as the contractor suggested when we complained about rising costs.

Most hardware and water fixtures were Brizo. Light fixtures came from Launceton, ET2, and a French dealer who provided a few antiques. Appliances are Miele, which were reasonable. She spent what I thought was too much on the whitest Cristallo quartzite you have ever seen. We had to buy through a distributor in Atlanta to get what she wanted, but it is stunning. Stone, fabrication, and installation costs were 375 per sq foot. These are the types of decisions that make such variability in cost of the whole project. You could get quartz or granite at $60/ft and save six figures on stone alone. Windows and doors, both exterior and interior, likewise range tremendously. Toilets and sinks were from the Kohler store in Houston.

One thing I would highly recommend is buy as little as possible from Home Depot or Lowe’s. They exist simply for convenience. Everything there, from lumber and screws to carpet, tile and light fixtures, is of generally low quality with a relative high price.

The complex is beautiful as you would expect, and produces the best tomatoes you have ever tasted, but I prefer the compound in MIssissippi, as it has the added luxury of years of memories. New is to me a last resort, and the process was tedious and took longer than promised and expected. We found the best subcontractors were Mennonite or Mexican, but perhaps those are too broad a generalization. Permitting was not terrible, but dealing with building inspectors and the current code was frustrating. Irrational electric code cost us 33,000 to reach a ridiculous standard that has since changed.

Yours,
TulaneLSU

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custom home


That is such an ambiguous term. It is like asking how much does a new car cost. A custom home could have 8' ceilings, carpet, a simple roofline, and bottom-of-the-barrel cabinets and fixtures.

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If that is what you are going to buy, you aren't going to custom design it, you are going to buy a spec/starter house.

Pricing on the Northshore as we speak.
2500 sf living, covered patio and porches, nice finishes, EXCLUDING LAND, just under $300 psf.
By the time I landscape and put driveway and flat work, likely well over $325+++