Cost of building an adobe home?
sunfeather
7 years ago
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7 years agolast modified: 7 years agoStan B
7 years agoRelated Discussions
Need cost cutting ideas for building a house
Comments (12)As a professional builder I can tell you that the main way to save money on your own home is to be your own contractor - you don't have to be skilled at building to do that. Many contractors rarely get out of their pick-up truck. It's not as scarey as many think to find and hire sub-contractors on your own - you make it clear at the outset that you are ordinary folks on a tight budget and you will likely find someone to do each phase for a fair price. It isn't difficult to discover what the going prices are- online, at the local lumber-yards, or even just ask builders and subs flat out. Most people like to give free advice - here I am doing it myself! Number one advice when dealing with builders and subs - do not try to get more than you pay for. You will get screwed. Myself and everyone I know in the business will go the extra mile for reasonable clients. We know how to deal with the graspers - and they won't know how we evened it up. Be extremely up front and clear as possible with what you want from each sub and don't hire anybody who is not equally clear. "No problem" and "we'll work it out" are warning signals. Good luck....See MoreBuilding vs buying home costs?
Comments (13)Woodside is one of the most expensive and exclusive towns in the United States. An acre of land there is at least $2M (more likely $3M) and that is before removal of an existing older home, grading, etc. You will not find land to support a house of this size there for $1M. You don't say where you are but it's sort of implied you're in the bay area. If so, then you'll have trouble finding land anywhere convenient that could support a property of this size for that budget. You might find some larger plots further up 84 towards Skyline, down south on 17 in the Los Gatos Mountains beyond Saratoga. I suspect you will like these locations even less though unless you enjoy being remote or have a business reason to be so far south. For most people on this forum, the real estate market in the SF Bay area and on the Peninsula in particular is just completely bonkers so please suspend your disbelief for a moment if you've not participated in this market. If you just like this style of house and could live with a 1/4-1/3 acre lot you may be able to find land in Redwood City's Emerald Hills neighborhood (also zipcode 94062) for the low $1Ms. It is very hard to find even quarter acre lots in the bay area as residential land has been saturated since the early 1970s, so you will be buying an existing house to tear down & replace. Existing homes on the peninsula range from $1M for a 1500sqft house on a 6000sqft (San Carlos/Redwood City area) lot to $2-3M for a 2500sqft house on a 11000sqft lot (Los Altos/Palo Alto area). In the lower density neighborhoods (Woodside, Portola Valley, Atherton, Los Altos Hills) you are looking at at least $2M for a teardown on an undesirable acre lot. In Atherton it's going to be $3-4M for a teardown on an acre. This is the cost of living inside the Silicon Valley bubble. A note on resale: In the right parts of the Bay Area it should be pretty easy to re-sell a property in the $2-4M range, unless there's something significantly weird about it. When you spend more than that, or move off the beaten track a little bit, you're looking at multiple months to sell (vs. multiple weeks). It should be possible to build this number of square feet for much less elsewhere in the country, but note that there is an expectation of quality/architectural detail in the San Francisco Peninsula's affluent hillside communities that is not easily replicated for less $ elsewhere....See MoreAdded cost for new home build elevation
Comments (13)I feel for your situation. We also were told that we would have a charge slightly higher because we needed extra dirt and a thicker foundation. We were told an extra 10,000 but I believe it was less. It was shady of your contractor to not mention it right away but would it have stopped you from building? Unfortunately it is very rare to not exceed a new construction budget. I have read multiple times to expect to go over. I have worked very hard at finding deals without compromising on the look we are going for. We are over half way in our build and are $17,000 under budget in our allowances. Unfortunately there are things that come up that we have no control over so even with a huge deficit from our selections our actual expenses are about $3,000 over budget so far. You may want to look into a loan if you are at your max on this house before really building. Things come up and it feels like your bleeding money at times but it's best not to be blindsided and expect unaccounted expenses....See MoreHow much will it cost to build this 84 lumber kit home?
Comments (17)84 Lumber plans are not DIY plans! I don't quite understand why people on this site seem to get so offended by someone finding a way to spend less money than they did. Just to be clear, these plans are simply a small tweak to the normal home building model and operate much like any home build would. In a typical build model a house plan is taken to the builder, who then has a lumber yard do the plan takeoffs. The lumber yard will then give the builder a list of items on the takeoff and a bid for that lumber package. What is included in that lumber package, and therefore the bid is somewhat up to the builder and client. Often the client will go back to the designer to attempt to value engineer the plans if they come up a bit over budget. The 84 Lumber plans use the same process, except the value engineering has been done by someone with a lot more material cost information and therefore the plans are generally tweaked to a much higher cost efficiency than independently designed plans. These are not paint by number plans or marked lumber that makes the house DIY friendly, it is a normal lumber package typically delivered to a normal contractor who is building a house with a fairly normal set of plans. The only significant difference between this and any other home that has been through extensive value engineering is the high degree of accuracy of the materials take-offs. The value engineering, plus the high degree of accuracy in the lumber package, often combine with contractors who are experienced with this particular process to create even more savings. The false dichotomy of HOA living or double wide trailers is disingenuous at best. The reality is that many people out there simply don't want to spend $80,000 on a kitchen and are fine with a functional house that lives well enough. They simply want to create a home for their family, often on rather rural pieces of land, and really don't care what the latest trend is....See Moresunfeather
7 years agosunfeather
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7 years agoInside the front bedroom of a house that passed a sale inspection ...we had some hairline cracks in the plaster that turned out to be covering major damage from decades earlier. The "repairs" turned into a multi-week multi-thousand dollar total remove, apply metal lathe and re-plaster the interior. Of the whole house ...
Our house was built before electricity ... it's been tucked in along door frames and behind baseboards. We also have a few places with conduit exposed.
The joy of living where housing codes and inspections were unknown. Massive erosion under a window from cracked exterior stucco and poor daulking, and the window was placed directly on the adobe with no framing, just the steel window supporting the wall. Replacing this window would rebuilding most of the wall. Needless to say, it's staying.
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