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Estimating Building Costs
How to Estimate your Home Building Costs
By: Mark J. Donovan
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Estimating building costs can be a
bit of a challenge, however if you are willing to do a little research and
follow a few basic guidelines you can get a fairly accurate idea of your
particular home building costs. There are numerous home building cost estimators
on websites, including a few on HomeAdditionPlus.com, and they can provide some
reasonably accurate estimates, however for more precise home building estimates
you really need to look locally for obtaining your best estimates.
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Start by understanding the real
estate market conditions in your local area. In particular, find out what the
average selling price is for new homes in your area. In addition, find out the
cost of the typical building lot in your area.
Once you have these basic pieces of information you can then begin estimating
building costs for your home construction project.
Using the sale price on a newly constructed home with similar quality and
features that you want to achieve in your home construction project, first
subtract the market cost of the land from the sale price of the new home.
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This will leave you with the actual
cost of construction of the home.
Next, divide the actual cost of constructing the home by the finished square
footage of the home. This should result in a cost per square foot for
construction.
With cost per square foot calculated, you now have a local and accurate metric
for estimating building costs for your home building project. |
To estimate your building costs,
simply multiply the cost per square foot you just calculated by the square
footage of your home building project.
To obtain specific costs for each segment of your home construction project,
e.g. framing, roofing, electric, plumbing, insulation, drywall, finish
carpentry, etc. you will need to request for bids from the various contractors.
I always suggest getting 2 to 3 bids for each segment of the home building
project so that you can get some price comparisons for each segment of the
project.
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Once you have all the cost estimate
bids from the various contractors you can select your preferred ones and then
role them up to estimate your building costs. The total cost of your new home
construction project on a cost per square foot basis should be very similar to
the cost per square foot you calculated earlier. If it is higher, then you may
want to go back and press your contractors on why their particular cost
estimates were so high. In some cases they may have legitimate reasons, and in
other cases they maybe just trying to take advantage of your limited home
construction project management experience.
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To help in soliciting contractor bids
see my
Home
Addition Bid Sheets. They will help you through the
process of obtaining and sifting through contractor bids so that you hire the
right contractor(s) for your home building project.
How to Finance your Home Building Project -
can help provide funds for your new home improvement project if financing is
required.
Related Information on How to Build Your Own Home
Design Software for Developing your own Home
Building Plans from Amazon.com
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No Obligation!
Fill out our 3-5 minute quick and easy form, and receive a free price quote
on custom home building from one of our prescreened and licensed custom home
builders. This process is free and there is no obligation to continue once you
receive your custom home building price estimate.
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