Cost of Building a New House
Space and Cost: A Deeper Dive Into the Equation, SF x $/SF = Cost
When thinking about building a new house many people want to begin by knowing what it will cost. This is so you can compare it to buying an already built house and possibly slightly modifying it to suit. A builder might provide you with a square foot cost range of his or her last couple of new houses and that’s what you use to compare. What you may not know is that you can also adjust the compactness of the plan to arrive at a much different conclusion. This other side of the equation is what we explore here.
In 2020 we built and moved into a new 2,000 square foot, three-bedroom house. It is designed to be green and healthy, two goals any house should achieve. The house has been so successful at achieving those goals at only a modest premium over an average building code compliant house that we decided to explore options for size while maintaining the same three bedroom, green and healthy criteria.
We used the 2,000 SF house as the intermediate size and then designed one that is larger and another that is smaller. You might call them “Small, “Medium”, and “Large” (S/M/L). What we found was that by exploring the compactness of the same three-bedroom program we arrived at three much different costs for a new home.
The sizes are S-1,200; M-2,000, and L-2,400 SF.. When multiplied by the cost per square foot, you arrive at much different costs for a new home. This would give a future owner more options on how to pursue new home design.
Here they are. For more detail, click the link to each design:
SMALL • 1200 SF
MEDIUM • 2000 SF
LARGE • 2400 SF
Construction Costs in 2022/2023 have risen by approximately 20 to 30% over 2019/2020. Due mostly from the approximately 40% rise in the cost of materials only. We are therefore looking at a range of between $500 to $580/SF cost of construction.