Building a Home | build a home | how to build a house

Lots of house plan websites and plan books offer to prepare a "materials list" for you - and for about thirty bucks some will even calculate a "cost to build" the house plan you've chosen.
But where does that cost information come from, and how useful is it? Can you rely on Internet material lists or cost estimating for your house project?
Local Cost Estimating
A homebuilder spends days, sometimes weeks, putting together a cost estimate for a new home project. The estimate has to be accurate because the builder may be competing against other bidders for the project, and because he's going to offer the homeowner a contract to build the house based on it.
His business depends on it.
Miss the cost by a few percentage points and he doesn't get the job - or worse, he gets it, but has lost money before he starts.
A homebuilder knows that every project is different; that the cost to build on one building site can vary greatly from another; and that prices for material and labor fluctuate almost daily.
And so the homebuilder does take-offs from the plans - a take-off is a calculation of the materials needed to build the house - and gives the take-offs to many vendors and subcontractors for prices. It's not unusual for a builder to send out fifteen or twenty sets of plans for pricing (as I'm writing this, I'm remembering sending out twenty-two sets to a builder just this morning).
He also estimates miscellaneous labor and material costs; permits; interest carrying costs; insurances; lot clearing; temporary electric service; portable toilet rental; overhead and profit; and a thousand other items necessary to successfully complete a construction project. A good line item take-off can use up five or more sheets of single-spaced legal paper.
But you don't need a detailed "take-off" at this point, do you? Don't you just want a ballpark idea of what the house will cost to build?
National Cost Averages
The problem is that building construction costs are just too sensitive to the idiosyncrasies of each building site, each builder, and each homeowner to get "ballpark" estimates from any place but building professionals who are familiar with your area.
What good is a "ballpark" estimate if your ballpark is Candlestick Park and theirs is Yankee Stadium? (You do remember Candlestick Park, don't you?)
There are a couple of national organizations that collect and distribute building cost data in books and on the Internet. They collect the information from building permits, from home sales reports, and from the United States Census (and a few other sources).
But even when comparing houses in a fairly narrow range of size and cost, the specifics of each house make average costs useless. Two identical homes can vary in cost by tens of thousands of dollars due just to the choices of finishes, fixtures, and appliances.
National cost averages are a reasonable way of comparing production-built home designs (a standard plan from a national builder) between regions, but area a poor and potentially misleading tool for guessing at the cost of an Internet house plan.
Back On Track
Fortunately there's a way to get a reliable cost estimate on the plan you like. Buy the "study plan" of one or two designs you like. Prepare as complete a specification list as you can for the house (more about this in the next chapter, "Construction Costs") and submit both to several reputable local builders for preliminary cost estimates.
The prices you get back (be sure to discuss them thoroughly with the builders) will be far more useful than anything you buy online. And in the long run you'll save money and time.
Out Of The Ballpark
A reasonably accurate ballpark estimate is a very useful tool in helping you decide whether you can afford to build a particular house plan.
But a poor initial estimate can cause you to pass up a plan you really can afford, or worse, get you far down the road with a project that's ultimately way outside your budget.
If you take the time to learn about what local costs are for houses like yours, with a level of finish like yours, using the same type of builder you'll use and in the area you want to build, you've got a very good chance of getting an ballpark estimate that's accurate enough to make meaningful decisions on.