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Comment by ryanar | Hacker News Reader

If you think new home construction is $150 / sq ft. (in the US), you haven't been keeping up with the times. It was $220 / sq ft. before COVID, now its $300+ for stick built. Modulars are $200-$250. When material prices tripled, the cost got offloaded to the customer, and given the demand hasn't changed.. it probably isn't going to regress to the mean anytime soon.

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Are you quoting prices including the cost of the land? Around here there's plenty of new construction being sold at well under $200/sq. ft., and even a fair amount at or under $150 / sq. ft. This is even when you include the price of the land.

Construction prices should not be assumed to be standardized, comparable or equivalent between locations.

agreed - many medium cost places in central NC are still under $200/sqft for new builds, including the land. It's typically a smaller lot than, say, 3-4 years ago, and the construction quality is (continually?) slipping, etc, but location is still a huge factor.

We were close to pulling the trigger with a builder last fall and it was going to be around $180/sqft, and it was a custom build, and included around .8 acre. Lumber and material spike through the winter here has put that on hold (and put a lot of their building on hold) and we might not be able to afford a revised price when things 'get back' to normal. We'd actually had plans sent to an engineering firm who came back and said "you have to redesign this, because some of the foundational materials aren't available, and won't be for at least 6 months". So we couldn't even get a final price had we wanted to, without revising the original plans, and... there was no guarantee that whatever the redesign included would be available at that point (possibly now it would - this was back in March/April?). We're basically in a holding pattern for a bit longer (as are some of the other customers they had lined up).

Supplies, land, labour, demand, location, taxes are some of the things that make it difficult to have a universal construction cost per sq foot.

At a granular level maybe some comparisons are possible.

The original premise of the comment above that because it’s not the same as where I am.. it can’t exist anywhere else is all I was shedding some light on.

Maybe $200. I’d be shocked if there’s still any new builds going for $150. Don’t just trust the “sticker price”. You’re almost always going to pay 25%-50% higher than what the builder advertises.

Even with current materials pricing? I live in a new development and the price went from $180/sqft to $300/sqft for the lowest end builds. We were all set to build our 'forever house' but we'd either spend 50% more or have to build a much smaller house, so we're just going to wait for a bit.

Yep:

https://bit.ly/3w3XyeR https://bit.ly/3hmGBak

There’s a big difference between spec houses and custom houses. I’m building a custom home in King County, WA right now, and it’s almost impossible to build under $300/sqft. And no, doesn’t include cost of land or land preparation costs.

You can build a custom home for the price of a spec home. However it means sticking to the budget instead of upgrading. You can put a $15 light fixture in the bedroom, or a $50 one - spec homes do the former, custom homes all later - it doesn't seem like much but these all add up. The cost to build a custom home and a spec home is nearly the same if you are careful not to do any upgrades. Those upgrades cost money though - if you are planning to live in the house for many years I'd say they are worth it but be aware of what you are getting into.

In my region, the material costs are just ~15% of the total cost to build. It's almost all labor costs.

That depends on the materials. Installing a $600 light fixture is the same labor as a $40 one. Thus a spec home the material cost tends to be a lot less a % of the total costs compared to a custom house. Though some custom changes require more labor, the effort difference between most is 0, and in a few cases slightly negative (if the material cost wasn't higher all spec homes would get these features)

I'm building a MFG home right now on 10 acres we're sitting at... $260 sq ft. That includes everything (home, site work and land)

Where I live the market rate was $100-125/sqft for single-family before the lumber supply squeeze. I think you just happen to live somewhere where inflation effects are ahead of the rest of us.

You can't just generalize like this. There is no standard price, as it is highly dependent on your geographic location.

Before COVID I just built a fully custom house in the OKC area for $142/sq. ft. including all my upgrades (base was $135 including land in a subdivision). Prices have definitely gone up due to lumber and are now in the $155-165/sq. ft. range base including land.

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