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      07-16-2021, 12:47 PM   #121
DETRoadster
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Quote:
Originally Posted by damnitBobby View Post
^ Nice

Does designing/building a custom home come out cheaper than buying a new construction template/cookie cutter home in this market? I was looking to buy a house but this market is insane right now. I'm starting to think it may be better to just buy cheap land somewhere and custom build.
Man, there's so many variables specific to what you want, what your local market is like, labor rates for builders and subs, etc. The short answer is "maybe." it's possible to build your own for less but it's also possible to spend waaaaay more than if you just bought.

I dont know about Houston but here in the Seattle Metro area you see little, old, sub 2000 sqft houses being torn down and replaced by 4,000 sqft homes that sell for $2M. if you compare like for like and try to do that on your own you end up with approximately:

$700k - Buy the tear down
$50k - Demo and site prep
$50k - Buy some off the shelf plans, engineering stamp, permitting, etc.
$1.2M - Build cost ($300 sqft x 4000 sqft).

Total is $2M. It's a complete wash.

Now in our case we wanted something that simply does not exist for sale. Big, wooded, flat, property in the city with a modest 2,000 sqft house with a big shop and a big garage. Best could find is maybe 3 of those 5 (property, location, house, shop, garage) in any 1 property and the selling price is $1M and up and you have to do a full gut-job on the house, build a garage, etc. $1.5M total investment, minimum. Our budget for our project is $1.2M so in our case we THINK we will come out ahead. But the big detached garage is on the bubble. It's highly probable we do the house with basement shop first and hit our budget target. Then follow up with the garage later.

Last edited by DETRoadster; 07-16-2021 at 01:20 PM..
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