for a house on a 7500 sq ft lot (not a 7500 sq foot house), the builder quoted "at least 1 million dollars. does that sound right to you?

does it matter if u build a house in socal or in BFE?

anyone have any experience with this and how can anyone afford it?

 

Sounds about right, depending on location, materials used, etc. If you can deal with being your own contractor, you could get it to less than $80-90 per sq.ft.

Edit: that wouldn't include the land in most cases.

 

My father told me the formula once, but i forgot...it really depends on the size of the home.

 

There's very little information there. Though 1 mil does sound insanely expensive for a 7,500 sq. ft. lot. It all depends on how big is the house and how crazy you want to go. You can build a complete plain-vanilla house for $150k or go crazy and spend that much just on marble floor tiles. Do you have a floor plan or something that you can post?

Also keep in mind the infrastructure. Are sewer, water and electricity available? Or do you have to tear the street to tap into utilities one mile down the road? And then there are plans, building permits, impact fees, etc. It all varies greatly from county to county. Was the quote for everything included or just for building the shell?

 

Using a range of $100-200 a sq ft for a modestly built house structure is a reasonable stab for a tract home. You need to adjust a bit for region, also. In Santa Montica, you may need to add ~$50/sq ft (just a guess). Add another $50/sq ft for expenses that go to having a custom house (you don't get to leverage architectural fees across many units, etc.) Now if you break free of the "modestly built" idea (looks like a cookie cutter suburb house), sky's the limit. I echo the you didn't give much info sentiment. Are you making a ranch style or are you going post modern on a beach front cliff?

 

No way does that sound right unless you plate the house in gold. I would say a 5000sft house should be approximately 600-750K (just in material and labor that is.)

 

i dont have much info to give.

it's a home on the lot. want to tear it down and build a new one. nothing extravagant. lets say avg. so many people are doing it in the area, but i can't imagine everyone of them spending over 1 million for it. the land itself is already 1+ million. how can anyone afford it? are they taking a loan from the bank and borrowing against their land?

 

OK, not much more info but it helps a little. I'm sure that the demo work is adding to the tab. Then, at $1 mil for a 7,500 sq. ft lot, I'm assuming that this is an very exclusive neighborhood, which means that it probably has some high architectural requirements. There's possibly an architectural board that will review your proposed design to make sure it's snobbish enough for their neighborhood before you can even submit for building permits. So you might have no choice but to build a fancy home on that lot, and the GC had that in mind when he gave you the quote. Then there's the fact that GC's will charge more per sq. ft. to build in fancy neighborhoods, even if they use the exact same materials and labor from building in the ghetto.

Though I must say that "at least 1 million" still sounds a little steep... there's only so much house that you can put on 7500 sq. ft.

 

I have been told no matter what, it's cheaper to buy one already built.

 

It's not cheaper to buy one already built IF you are doing the building. If you are going to a builder then usually it is cheaper to find a preowned.

Out here $1mil for a dinky little 7500 foot lot would be outrageous!

By that logic no one could build on my 3 acre lot.

It's not lot size that determines the house cost (except for the portion of the cost the lot adds) it is the size and quality of the house put on the lot.

Some areas require a certain build level which would sort of pinpoint a total price. It sounds like that is what is happening in that neighborhood.

I just finished building a very upscale house for much less than $100 a foot. But I built it myself (subcontracted it actually).