Good design begins with the specific lot, so you need to know what lot you're going to build on. With the possible exception of in-fill lots in town, the house should fit the land in terms of topography, orientation, etc. Make SURE you do your own due diligence when selecting a lot- surrounding area, zoning rules, topography, flood zones, proposed airport- whatever. If I were building a garage that big, I'd want it separated from the house, or it will by far be the most prominent feature.

As far as cost, I would think a custom builder who does the sort of home you're thinking of should be able to give you some idea of cost, although it will always end up costing more. The builder that you stated would be a great resource should be able to give you a very general ballpark range. There are so many factors affecting cost- simple v. complex, low end finishes v. high end, builder grade v. custom. Around here, tract homes start under $100/ sq ft; custom can run $300 and up. Even the specific lot can greatly affect cost. A 1,000 foot driveway costs a lot more than a 40 foot driveway. That gorgeous chalet perched on the edge of an inaccessible cliff ain't gonna be cheap. Huge amounts of fill, exotic septic systems, difficult well drilling, blasting, etc. can all blow the budget out of the water.

I've seen the push here for hiring an architect, but I was surprised to see helping stay on budget as one of the reasons. I've seen comments to the opposite effect, that the architect had no idea about real costs. I've seen more advice that to stay within budget, if you hire an architect, you should bring your builder in early in the process to create a team to achieve your goals. We did not use an architect for either of our two builds so I have no experience to share, just sharing my differing perception of what other people have said about their experiences with architects.

Great advice from mushcreek.

There are a number of good threads here on "selecting an architect" and "how to design your house/home". Search for them and you'll find some helpful information.

If you start with $150 per square foot, and $20,000 per garage bay, 4 total, that's $455,000.00 not including land, site prep, landscaping, and financing. It could be cheaper in a low cost of living area, or much higher.

Can you afford 400-600K is where you start. If the answer is no, then that is all the answers you need. If the answer is yes 600K is no problem, then again. that's all the answer you need.

It is if the answer is "maybe" that things get sticky. How much actual cash you have is as important as finding the right person to help you spend it. Too little, and if the home won't appraise for the 500K it costs to build, then you have to bring additional cash to the table beyond the 20% down payment.

Keep the design simple, like s Colonial or Georgian instead of NeoEcclectic Giganticous Gable Excessiveus, and you have a greater chance of being on the lower end of the continuum rather than the higher.

We can afford $400-$450k. $500k is possible but might be painful. $600k (on top of the land) would rule out building. We're looking at in-fill lots in the 0.5-0.75 acre range. The real question for each lot is if it would support a daylight basement or not. Even if we don't finish it right away, we'd like that.

I know that exterior design has to go hand in hand with floor plans, but I have a pretty wide range of "nice looking house"--and I definitely don't want to go into NeoEcclectic Giganticous Gable Excessiveus (Way to go Sophie). I'm a big fan of simple clean lines. We want a ranch--but it doesn't need to crazy with gables or fake dormers or anything like that. We have two bump outs in current house--both of which are quite functional (master bedroom and the dining area, and we aren't looking for that sort of thing throughout either.

So, I guess our plan is:

1. Continue my collection of "inspirations" and "what we're thinking of"s.
2. Make sure I have a list of lots we really want to look at and research setbacks, utilities, and tax rates for each.
3. Before our trip to the Chicago area next month, like up some appointments with a couple of potential architects and/or design & build firms and gather more advice.

In one of the select an architect threads that VirgilCFA referred me to (thanks!), I found a lot of different ideas of what to bring to an architect (and, in great forum tradition, disagreement :-).

We have some general floor plan ideas but we're really open there. I do know how many rooms we need (3 BR, 2.5 BA, kitchen, office, great room, large dining area, and a flex space for a second office). From an exterior point of view, the only thing I'm "set on" is that I want the area directly in front of the front door covered.

We'd move our house intact if we could, but wouldn't build the same house again since we no longer have 3 teenagers at home.

I really hope we can make building work. I'm concerned that if we buy, we'll do a lot of settling, and then spend $150-200k renovating--with the real risk of overbuilding a neighborhood.

You really can't begin the process until you have property to build on. That's because the site, its orientation, terrain features and slope, positive and negative views, etc., are so influential in the design of a custom home. Have you selected property or at least an area which contains available property which is affordable and meets your criteria? That would be a good place to begin your search.

Here's a very loose estimation of how to see how much house you can afford to build: briefly peruse the homes for sale in the area in which you want to build. Find a brand new one of similar size, style, and finish levels of frugality/luxury, on the size of lot you are thinking of. Add 10% to its price and then compare that to what you were thinking of spending on building your own new house.

Care to share where you are moving to? It varies so much by location, that you honestly can't get accurate info here (unless you are taking advice from a poster whom built in the exact county you are moving to).

For example the first person whom posted asking if you can afford 450K-600K and if not, there's your answer.. Well that very well may be exactly true where they live, but not where I live. In North Texas you can build a truly custom home with nice finishes (as in nicer than builder grade) for FAR under $150 a sq ft. Sure anyone could drive the cost up to that point, but that would be every sq inch of very very expensive finishes or tricky land requirements, etc

My point is, take the advice with a grain of salt because it has everything to do with the area you are moving to, more so than the finishes you choose IMO. I see prices on here of what people pay to build and I'm flabbergasted!

Although everyone here it seems also says it's far more expensive to build than buy existing, but that is not true where I live. Our school district is highly sought after and the homes are priced a minimum of 300K MORE than what it will cost to build. So again, it's location, location, location. Which means you really need to get referrals, read reviews and schedule a few meetings with architect/builders. Normally they will meet with you at no cost the first time.

Uhm...if newly built houses can be built for 300k under their market value, you wouldn't be able to hire a builder because they'd all be too busy building spec houses.

I used to live close to the area where bethohio is moving and it is not an inexpensive place to live or to build. Land costs are significant because there isn't any to speak of unless a huge estate is being broken up or she decides to go further out from the metro area or a builder has done a tear down. Most municipalities have additional codes over and above the national, often several pages worth (union drives codes in this area) and system requirements are stricter than in many other areas. Some of the requirements have been adopted from commercial code. And then there's RE taxes on a new build which will be heart stopping so you really have to look at that in advance of building. When purchasing an existing home, if it hasn't changed hands in many years the taxes may be very attractive but the year after purchase they will be reevaluated based on sale price and jump significantly - and then again for the quadrennial reassessment.

Andy, I'd be happy to give you zip code and school ISD info to see for yourself..

I didn't say the houses were comparable. You can't buy new existing or build a tract home that's under 4500K sq ft. Average is 5K sq ft. My 300K, shy of 3,000 sq ft doesn't include my 2acre lot which is much larger than what these huge houses are being built for.

Obviously there are lots of places in the Midwest and South where you might be able to build cheaper. Call it $100 per square foot. These are low cost of living areas, with abundant labor, and likely a slightly higher unemployment rate. But to get a good idea of costs that's at all helpful for all sorts of people reading this site, we want something closer to the national average.

There are many areas on the coasts, from Seattle to San Diego to Boston to Washington, where the unemployment rate is very low, the population density is very high, and the cost of living is also high. You could easily go to $200 per square foot there, and a lot of contractors simply won't work for less, because they have their pick of jobs right now.

I can attest to this personally, as I am currently collecting estimates. I just got a rough quote for $256.00 p.s.f. in Kennebunkport, a high cost of living area. Now Kennebunkport is much higher than Texas, on average, but it's not as bad as Silicon Valley or Long Island.

It's just part of the cyclical nature of real estate. At some point the cycle will reverse, but right now it's on it's way to becoming a bidding war in some places.

If you take the average of the low end, at $100 per square foot, and the high end, at $200 per square foot, you get $150 per square foot, and a weighted average (because the population density skews to the coasts) might even be higher.

Therefore, $150 (for a custom build, not production housing) is just a rough figure, somewhere in the general vicinity of an average, where you would add or subtract a bit, depending on where you are.

I live in one of the cheapest, most economically depressed states in the nation. There is no way that you could do a custom build for $100 a square here. No way. Not unless someone is misusing the term "custom". Which often happens. People want the label but don't understand what it actually means.

While you don't want to overbuild, you also have to be wary of underbuilding. I don't know your area, but in my NYC school-age family friendly town, a house on .5-.75 acres would be expected to be at least 4 bedrooms (and probably 3.5 baths if it's a newer house). While that extra bed/bath would add about $40-60k, you'd more than get that back in re-sale because the market for a 3/2.5 is smaller, and the comps are much older homes.

So just make sure you build to the neighborhood, not solely your own needs.

We're moving to the Chicago area--west, north west or north suburbs. We want to be in what I think of as the second ring of suburbs--further out (but not much further out) than O'Hare. Not as far as Elgin or St Charles--preferably very convenient to the expressways. There are at least a dozen municipalities we'd be open to. We are still mulling over what compromises we're going to be willing to make. House--location--price.

I've been perusing listings--we haven't gone into any homes yet and there's only so much you can tell about a floor plan from a listing. And Google earth helps but we can't completely tell neighborhood from the maps. (we're planning a trip next month and will be scouting)

I hadn't thought about under building--that is a risk we'll have to think about. Our idea of a 3 bedroom includes an office and another flex room (probably dining room) that we can use as a second office, and 2.5 baths. We'll probably do a rec room, bedroom , and bath in the basement as well. We'll talk to a realtor about if that's under building.

You've all given me a lot to think about. There are so many open variables that I feel as if my head is spinning

bethohio - the good news is, you're moving to an area where there is an enormous range of options in existing houses and even more so because you are willing to look at a pretty wide area. Honestly, I'd be shocked if you couldn't find a house with a lot of what you want and the rest or most of the rest attainable with remodeling/addition - and at less cost than building new. The most difficult part will be the walkout basement. In flatland IL that usually has to be a forced grade change and means lots of other compromises on a 1/2 acre lot.

You could contact the Northern IL Homebuilders Assoc and see if there are Parade of Homes type things going on where you could get a feel for builders in your target areas. Or at least they may give you info on how to find builders.

Somewhere you had mentioned about wanting to be located so that you could entertain friends/family and you'd be able to get to them but it sounds as if they are spread over a wide area. That's one thing about greater Chicagoland - going from say somewhere in the north suburbs to the west suburbs for a Sat. bbq is a PITA. You'll do it once and at the next invitation it will feel like a chore! There's always traffic. Always.

Architects are great and well worth the money. While I can't offer much advice, we went to ours with a basic plan that I found online that matched what we wanted in general. Then we made adjustments from there. It was particularly great when designing our living room which backs onto our staircase. I didn't want just a banister there so that you could see all the TV cords when you went downstairs. Having the architect helped us visualize the space with a full wall (made the staircase too dark), half walls (just looked funny) then finally, one kind of "accent" wall right in the middle of the space with the railing on either side. That's what we went with and it looks great. Being able to wall mount our TV was important and we were also able to purchase a wall mounted console which really opened up the space and gave it a nice clean look.

Most importantly is when you can do an actual 3D walk through of your home. Most people can't visualize things in 3D and this can really help you make the right changes to the layout and where you think closets, doors, hallways etc. might be awkward, not easily accessible, barriers etc. I must admit our living room and dining space looked really small on the program but ended up being a perfect size once we actually built.

Our construction loan company made us fill out a "cost to build" estimate before they would fully approve our loan. While I had already been doing a lot of research, it definitely helped put all the numbers into perspective. We ended up going over budget. Not because of fancy changes but more-so because of unforeseen overages (ex: well needed to be drilled double the depth of what we expected and drilling is not cheap) and just general misunderstandings of costs. We still landed in what we could afford and don't regret the build or any purchase we made.

DLM200--part of our issue is that we'd both like to build if we can make it work. We built the house we're in now and we got spoiled. Our house actually has more than enough storage (as evidenced by the fact that we have a closet I've never used). The floorplan works. There are almost no 'honey-do' tasks or 'replace/fix infrastructure' tasks beyond routine maintenance. My kitchen is as close to perfect as our budget permitted. We have the double shower we wanted. The master opens on to the backyard so we can get to the hot tub easily.

Pros to building:

• Control over floor plan (office space, open plan for entertaining)
• Design my own kitchen
• Can plan for sufficient storage
• Can control all the 'finishes'
• Can plan perfect master bath
• Can (we hope) manage to build our extra large garage as one big garage instead of an attached garage and a detached garage

Disadvantages to building

• Limited availability of suitable lots in the areas we're considering, especially since we want to be near an expressway
• Cost of building
• Many available lots require a private well and/or septic
• Would need temporary housing, meaning we'd have to move twice
• General stress of building (offset by getting exactly what you want)
• Would likely be a lot in a neighborhood in transition (in the slow process of teardowns being replaced by new homes)

Disadvantages to buying existing

• Limited availability of properties that already have the garage we want
• Would likely require extensive remodeling to get the kitchen, modern master bath, and open floor plan we want, which could drive up the price even beyond building new, with the risk of overbuilding for a neighborhood
• Older homes tend to have less "interesting" architectural features

I really appreciate everyone's input--this is the time for DH and I to be considering the options--and the inputs have helped crystallize thoughts so we can weigh the advantages/disadvantages and decide which way to go--whatever it is.