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I am looking for property in Northern California and will probably be building my own home. It will of necessity be small, fairly conventional, and have no high end finish materials or fixtures. Foundation will be either slab or perimeter. It will have three bedrooms and two baths. I’ve been a carpenter for 23 years, and would at times have a second skilled carpenter and a laborer on site.
Does $70.00 per square foot sound like a reasonable estimating/financing figure?
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For just the house you describe, on the grid, not including the lot, well and septic I think $70 per sq' is probably a safe estimate. As long as you keep the plan simple and dont add more kitchen and bath stuff additional sq footage would probably be much cheaper.
Just for the record I hate sq footage pricing of houses. I kind of liked the fellow on this board who thought the real estate industry should price houses by the pound.
JonC
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We're currently building a retirement home on the Southern Oregon Coast. Its 1658 SF over a 500 SF daylight basement, post & beam construction with generally high end details.
I've kept careful records and here's where we are: House alone should come in at about $75/SF. Total cost, exclusive of the land, will be about $83/SF.
The biggest eye-opener we've had in this whole process was the high cost of bringing utilities in, grading a drive and getting water. As you can see, that came to over $12,000. Maybe we were naive.
*How much should one plan for INCREMENTAL square footage? I'm currently designing a home with an architect. An architect I didn't hire said that $100/sf in the South San Francisco Bay area would be like living in government housing. I'm currently planning on $120/sf (exclussive of land, grading, land/hardscape and utilities). The home is to have a deluxe kitchen, all hardwood and tile floors, etc., but minimal built in furniture. The floor plan design just crept up from 3000 to 4000 square feet, and this kills my budget at $120/sf. How can one cost incremental square feet? By the way, I'm looking for a general contractor to build this house in Cupertino.
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I am looking for property in Northern California and will probably be building my own home. It will of necessity be small, fairly conventional, and have no high end finish materials or fixtures. Foundation will be either slab or perimeter. It will have three bedrooms and two baths. I've been a carpenter for 23 years, and would at times have a second skilled carpenter and a laborer on site.
Does $70.00 per square foot sound like a reasonable estimating/financing figure?