What is the cost per sq. ft. to build a home?

[Applause] yesterday I had a really interesting conversation with the architect and we were talking about a house and the house is really mid school house it's a French country it's got 12 12 pitches it's got its got dormers it's got a lot of rot work it it's a pretty house really pretty house the problem is is the house that he's drawn doesn't fit the owners budget so we've got a Ferrari and people can afford a GMC so we started talking about where we could cut costs and the architect was said well I don't I don't you know I I don't want to lose the feel of the house because we could give them a cardboard box and it would be cheap but that's not the look or the feel that they ultimately want I'm like well I get that we can value engineer it and I and he's like you know I hate I hate the word value engineer because what that means to an architect is typically the Builder is going to cut off all of the design that the architect has put into it you know the architects like my beautiful masterpiece so I said I think there's other ways to get the look in the style and the feel that the homeowner wants by focusing on where the real value is and so it started this conversation of where is the real value in a house and from a builders perspective when I get that appraised or even by the county when they come out to assess the value for taxes or the real estate agent for market value everything is based on square footage so with that said building an inexpensive home means that you're putting in as much square footage as possible because that's where the value is for as little amount of money as possible so it started that thought process of where could we pick up inexpensive square footage so the first place was in in the basement if we could find a lot for the owners or we could shrink down the footprint of the house and put in a basement because every house is going to have a footing and it's going to have a stem wall and if we only add another four foot of concrete to that crawlspace they get a full basement they get double their square footage and and they get a greater value of the home for only slightly more cost associated with that so basement was the first place we thought we could pick up more square footage the second was going up in doing the Attic trusses because inside that roof space between the main floor and the roof whether we have attic trusses in there or not that space is going to be there if we put living space in there that square footage now has value and the home can appraise for higher and yet it's not a great big additional cost to building that hard so that's that was the conversation that started in so I get a lot of people that call me and say hey we want to build a house hey can you build a house for us how much does it cost to build that house per square foot that's a trick question because there are so many variables so usually when somebody says how much do you are you building for a square foot I start asking questions about where their priorities are where they're building what what the CCR's or codes covenants and restrictions in their neighborhood might be what the curb appeal it is that they want in front of their house and some of the other features that are important to them you know if a family's got eight kids and they need they they definitely need six bedroom home with with three bathrooms or whatever it may be then that's going to be build specific to them as opposed to say a retired couple that just wants room to entertain when family comes to visit or whatever so when people ask me hey what are you what are you add to build per square foot it's all about hey are we building in the city hey we're building in the country hey is this a two-story home is this a Rambler it doesn't have a garage there's lots and lots of questions so I want to take a few minutes and finish talking about the price per square foot and value engineering a home to get the most home for the least amount of money now that does mean making some compromises one of the least expensive homes that I've ever ever built had a basement in it it was 30 foot by 40 foot and it had attic trusses upstairs so bear with me on my drawing here so I'm not sure if you can see that I'm gonna try and zoom in for ya oh that's a beautiful picture right there so we were 30 foot by 40 foot so if you take that that equals 1,200 square feet so that means in the basement we had 12 and upstairs on the main field we had 1,200 and then up in these attic trusses it was hold on a second we were it was by 14 foot so we had it was 14 foot across and then 40 foot long so if we've got sorry I'm struggling to draw and do math and talk all at the same time but 14 times 40 would be yeah so 10 times 40 is 400 and then another 160 so fun 560 square feet upstairs 1880s yeah 480 okay so total square footage of this house is twenty or twenty four hundred twenty-nine hundred twenty-nine hundred and sixty square foot now what was great about this house is that we only had I mean this thing is as as value engineered as I've ever seen so there was no windows on the sides of the of the building there was no windows in the basement no windows in the side no Dorpers on the side of the house so all we had was front door window window and then we had a basement window basement window and then we had a center window so on this house there was a total of five windows and one door and would take that times two because it was the same on the other end of the house for total of ten windows two doors really really really inexpensive I've got some pictures of this house and I'll put these I'll show you what that looks like so this home was really really inexpensive in your well why what made it inexpensive well roofline really really simply and underneath this one roof one roof but we're getting one two three floors of area under one roof and we've got a foundation and basement walls but it's only 30 foot by 40 foot it's relatively small footprint for the home typically a home that that would be a 3,000 square foot home might have double that much footing and foundation so that was a real price savings not having doors windows doors or windows or even doors windows like dormers out here you might see people have a some kind of a some kind of a dormer up here this is not my best work and that would create a window up here but it also creates a lot of expense and cost to build this and waterproof it and buy another window and everything else so by eliminating that dormer save a lot of money so this is a very simple way for somebody who's hey I want to build an inexpensive home then this home as as it was we're a hundred with the lot and I understand that property land a huge variable but this with the lot and the home built we were at a hundred and eighty K so we could take 180 and divide that into twenty nine sixty we would get let me get my calculator [Applause] so if we take $180,000 182 3 and we divide that by 20 960 that ladies and gentlemen is about $61 a square foot now for those of us that are out building all the time and we're seeing stuff come in at 25 dollars a square foot one project that we're working on is at 170 dollars a square foot sixty sixty one dollars a square foot is like free absolutely really really really inexpensive so when people ask me what does it cost to square foot or what are you building for square foot a simple home like this that has a basement and main floor and then a little loft up here but this is very simple but this this had three bedrooms in the basement plus a game room we had main floor kitchen laundry room and master bedroom and upstairs we had a bathroom two bedrooms so we had a six bedroom home three bathrooms in it so six bedrooms three baths and a laundry room tucked into this thing for around sixty one dollars a square foot is amazing now I would bet that if a person was to do this a dollar at a time and didn't have to mess with a mortgage and getting the bank loan done and paying on interest over time for money that they borrow for materials you could go out and do this for even less especially if you invested a lot of sweat equity if you can put sweat equity into this I bet you could get that number down below sixty one dollars a square foot so let's let's talk about some of the issues that a lot a lot of architects would have with this this is a very simple design there's no artistic detail nobody's going to call this a French Country or a colonial whatever because it doesn't have any of the architectural details in it like columns and pulse or food roofs or fancy wall it's it's eliminated all of that cloth and Burbage money but doesn't add value that in in the I I mean it might add value to the homeowner because they think I have a cute house but it doesn't add market value to a bank to a lending institution to an appraiser to a real estate agent it's all about square footage so this is one example of a way to build really inexpensively depending on what your needs are now some people might say hey I want a nice house I want a fancy house and I want porches and I want wraparound and I want timbers and it's got to be French country I got to have it I want all the architectural details inside outside vaulted ceilings stonework I got to have it fine we'll give it to you but it's gonna be at 150 dollars a square foot or 170 dollars a square foot or whatever I mean I have literally built houses at a $400 a square foot and they were spectacular but they've got all sorts of bells and whistles that most homes don't have like radiant floors throughout everything it's got stereo speakers and theater rooms and Gipp Creek floors and all sorts of fancy things really expensive heating and air conditioning systems and fancy electrical systems lots and lots of lights you know for example if you hang a light fixture on the ceiling that light fixture you'll be picked up at Home Depot for 70 bucks and it's got 560 light 60 watt light bulbs in it that's really inexpensive for that wattage now if I go put can lights and I put in a kitchen I got a homeowner that wants let's say I've got a home owner that wants 15 can lights in the kitchen so it's really and each of those are $40 apiece there's going to be more right yes but it's gonna be a lot more expensive to put in all of those can lights and then it would be to just a single light fixture so there's there's II wait is like that like that's just one example where you can save money and and bring down the cost per square foot [Applause] [Music] so let me show you a comparable to something that we're working on right now it's in the pipe and we're trying to get the cost of square foot down to a hundred and we're trying to really trying to get that price down a hundred and twenty five hundred and thirty dollars a square foot because that's kind of the budget and there's there's some the land cost issue which has got some problems with high water it's going to need some some engineering and some drainage and it might even end up being slab on grade in order to put this home on that property so that this home that we're we're working on putting together and fitting out it's not going to have a basement in it which means we lose one place where we can pick up some inexpensive square footage which is then driving up the price of of the overall square footage so let me get rid of this and we'll talk about that one it as comparison [Music] okay so this house I'll show you a layout it is so l-shaped which any time you turn a corner it costs money that's why shoebox square is always less expensive I've got a two-car garage no sorry I've got a two-door garage that is a three-car garage so I have so I've got three-car garage [Applause] three car garage here and as you can see in regards to foundation I've got all of this foundation here that and around this whole thing is a lot more than on that other house but what we've got here is we have a garage the other house didn't have a garage which is why the cost was so low so we didn't have that additional roof we didn't have that additional foundation we didn't have that additional concrete flat work to put in a garage so obviously the cost of this home is going up because of the cost of this garage but it's almost people want a garage and they want a push to be able to pull in out of the weather get the groceries out of the car whatever put their car away at night lock it up keep it out of the weather keep it nice it's most people want that in their home obviously it costs a little bit more money so this house this is kind of our kind of our layout we're about 90 foot 30 40 by 70 and this is 30 this is 30 this is 40 and that leaves this at 60 so you start adding these all this up as we're going around the house that's a lot of footing and a lot of foundation now the issue on this property is that it's got a high water table and we may end up with a slab on grade which means no crawlspace and no basement we'll just pour a thickened edge and it'll be a concrete floor but all of the plumbing utilities possibly some electrical runs will have to put in conduit in that floor in order to run a lot of those mechanical systems so there's a little bit of savings deck because I'm definitely not going to be pouring as much concrete in in a wall for it's all space but I am going to be playing the floor so a lot of cost a lot of cost there [Applause] [Music] [Applause] let's let's see if I can draw this [Applause] bear with me my drawing is not not all that sweet so I've got got the front of the house and I've got the garage this house has a great big porch on it and all these big fancy posts and like we've got windows garage doors dormers I think there's there's 2 dormers over the garage bear with me so you can see this is a great-looking house fantastic house but so we don't have a basement and we had this this roof what these fancy do so one of the things that we have to do do is okay if we can't get a face then let's work with your square foot [Applause] so first thing we did is we went and looked upstairs and these were just regular trusses and the regular trusses there was nothing up there these were totally fake there they weren't real they just sat on the roof detail so he went and looked at this space up here and we were able to talk about the Attic trusses and picking up some square footage upstairs and really [Applause] [Music] [Applause] with that there were were these dormers on the backside of the house and these dormers on the backside of the house and they were all fake and they weren't serving any purpose other than they looked cool but we were able to put in attic trusses and eliminate the dormers on the backside of the house and with that save a bunch of money and pick up square footage that was lost by not having a basement so we were also it if you're able to you can see that there was a lot of windows in this house and we were in order to kind of value engineer things we took and cut off this end of the house [Applause] by cutting off that end of the house yes we lost some square footage but we've stayed the whole bunch on a conference pudding and we were able to put some of that square footage back over the garage and a much less a much cheaper price point than pouring concrete floor for that space so that was a way that we were able to get the budget down on this house is by trimming out some of the architectural details that weren't going to be seen on the back of the house by cutting down square footage that included the slab and the roof and so I'm sharing this story and it's kind of abstract I realize that but the idea is is you're out wanting to build a home build for yourself try and understand is you're looking at house plans or whatever that that all of that fancy fluff all that icing on the cake is where the cost comes from and so if you can eliminate dormers especially if there's it if they're fakes that just sit on the roof get rid of them or leave them on the front of the house so that as you pull up to the house you see your beautiful French country home but when you're out in the backyard mowing the lawn it's just a flat roof and nobody sees it nobody really cares and it saves you a whole lot of money you know most people have a mortgage and that's great but when you start talking about $1,000 at 4% over 30 years every thousand dollars starts to get really really expensive so I wanted to open this conversation and talk about ways to get the price per square foot down this house is going to end up at around 4,200 4,200 square foot and we are about a hundred and seventy dollars [Music] that's square foot you can see that that gets pretty spendy in a hurry just to double check my math 170 times 4200 this house is going to cost seven hundred and fourteen thousand dollars and when we before we made these adjustments we were just over a million dollars to build this house so I think that as you're out there shopping you're looking at plans you're thinking about building a house for yourself or building another home there's a lot of ways to sit down with your builder your architect actually I wouldn't I would I would sit down with your builder and if your builders work is salt he's going to be able to walk you through three or four or five different ways where he could trim the budget and still give you what you want if he can't offer you three solutions or three options go get yourself another Boulder [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Essential Mountain Homesteading

Views: 250,172

Rating: 4.7048731 out of 5

Keywords: north idaho real estate, appreciation, depreciation, price per square foot, how to invest, real estate, house, home, estate, rehab, virtual, equation, Learn how, learn to, price, square, foot, trick, investing, tutorial, How to, realtor, property, ideas, market, advantage, sales per square foot, how to find square feet, metrics, appraiser, appraisal, real estate agent, Real Estate (Industry), price per sq. ft., new home building, new construction, building a house, mike ferry, real estate coach, flip

Id: jdne_aCjLuU

Length: 33min 59sec (2039 seconds)

Published: Fri May 11 2018