Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Where I live, the biggest costs of building a single family home are: 1. Land, 2. Permits and paperwork, 3. Everything else. You’ve spent the majority of your budget before a single shovel gets put into the ground. Seems like these would also be good things to start with when addressing the price to build a home.

View on HN

I’m really surprised that permits and paperwork could hold a candle to actual buildings costs.

Sing it with me: ♫ Cal-i-forn-i-a! No doubt about it! ♫

I think you need a notarized document from the county in order to simply gaze at your property in this state.

Permits and paperwork are probably mostly a time and restrictions on what and where you can build cost rather than a direct monetary cost. But certainly indirectly have a lot of influence on where and how you can build.

permits aren't too expensive that's true but the surveyors and engineers are.

the waiting can be very expensive for individuals as they have to live somewhere. for developers it's more about the indirect cost of having a lot of capital tied up during that time.

then there's environmental assessments, some places have to deal with archaeological assessments too. developers need to pay people to deal with the permitting processes. lawyers are often involved throughout as well.

architects and engineers need to be involved, often repeatedly, if you're modifying an off-the-shelf design too.

as with buying a house, there are a lot of expenses that very few people consider, and are hard to predict even if they do.

Whats the cost of only being allowed to build a SFH

That would have to be calculated as an opportunity cost, That can be fudged to anything. Many real estate development are only successful because the property was bought from the original bankrupt developer.

Opportunity costs can also be a negative number.

The article is about a single family home. And pretty much all the costs mentioned in another comment (and maybe more) apply to a manufactured home as well.

That shows up in the “land” field.

What is SFH?

Single family home, usually also implies detached.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com