BJ,

I've got to say HomeCost was very helpful to me for a variety of different reasons. 1. The final cost estimate is within 2-3% of what our real estimate totals came in at. There were some true misses. The drywall estimate we received was twice what resicost had. The appliance allowance the website gave us was steeper then what we came in with. However, at the end of the day....we were pretty close to the final number given by resi-cost. 2. Resi-Cost forced us to really define our spec down to the floor finishes, countertops, fixtures etc. The questions are quite exhaustive and take at least an hour maybe two. When in doubt we went with more expensive options just to be sure we accounted for any differernces. When we began we were in a "dream" stage. The resi-costs questions forced us to really think hard about each piece of the puzzle. Lastly, it doesn't leave anything out. Or at least it seems that way. From utility hookups to builders risk to average builder overhead etc. it covers all the bases. We haven't yet broke ground and have built a 15% contingency into our own budget but we do have actual estimates in each category from 2 or 3 different contractors. Which brings me to my last pump for this website. Download the spreadsheet of your finished product and copy it off to your hard drive. We used that spreadsheet as a basis to prepare bid requests and estimates for our own jobs. It becomes pretty easy to see where you're getting "snowed" as well as any pieces you've missed. I'll copy my initial work below and then in a sepearate link shoot out my current estimate. At the end of the day it's around 200.00 for estimate. It ends up being roughly 0.05% of our total costs. It was a shot in the dark for us that really paid off. The download link for the spreadshete may be a little tough to find on this storage website. After clicking the link below scroll down below the advertisement under the "Downloading a File" Icon. There should be a counter there that when finished sends you to a link for the spreadsheet.

Here is a link that might be useful: Starting Point

Here is a link to the final estimate.

Here is a link that might be useful: Final Estimate

kemptoncourt: thanks so much! I'm impressed with the spreadsheets; looks pretty complete to me. One question: are you limited (other than by the length of your online subscription) to any number of times you can propose alternate scenarios and develop comparative spreadsheets?

As you've stated the only limit is the time frame of the subscription. We went with the "full" version for the shortest time frame. You can try as many different scenarios and "tweak" out the main scenario as much as you want within the stated subscription limits.

kemptoncourt: Sounds great. I'm going for the full version for 1 month. Looking forward to getting a better feel for how our choices affect the bottom line. Esp. in areas we don't know much about.

Wonder why there aren't more people chiming in on this topic. It's the area of greatest uncertainty, and therefore fear for me.