That's $95/sq. ft., which seems awfully cheap. Wood and other construction supply prices have risen considerably.

Is that an all-in price including kitchen cabinets and appliances? Would you be content with the lowest grade of everything?

Ask contractors in your area fir an estimate.

Home builds ranged around $200 a square foot for custom before Covid. With the leap in materials costs , who knows how high that will be until the project is over?

Is the area zoned to allow trailers? If allowed, an old trailer on the property could provide shelter while you cash build over an extended timeline. Your budget would likely get it dried in. And you could work on it inside until it was finished. It depends on zoning and the length of time that a building permit was allowed to be open. Obviously that will not work with bank involvement rather than cash. Banks are already very leery about self GC builds, and charge more to do that. If they even offer a loan for it at all.

There was that other barndominium person recently that couldn't get a loan..

I'm in central Texas. 5 years ago, I would have said yes. We built a 3bed/2bath 1300 sq ft home back then for less than $75/ft. It wasn't anything fancy but it was super cute and we sold it for a decent sized profit recently. Keep in mind that we did a lot ourselves. This year, we built a 4bed/4bath 2600+ sq ft home and it cost around $145/ft. That is with us doing all electrical, hvac, trim work, and some other custom extras, plus hiring everything out ourselves (aka, we was the builders). We did choose to do some higher end selections this go around. I could have easily shaved a significant amount of cost off by choosing some less expensive items, and skipping on the extras we went with. The best thing to do is setup a spreadsheet and start getting bids (once you figure out a house plan and such). You don't want to start building a home only to run out of money before you are done! I do know building material costs are way up right now, even from when we started our build last year (& completed this year). Our biggest budget buster was our lumber and that was back in fall of last year. I'd hate to know what it would do to our budget now since lumber costs have sky rocketed. It should start coming back down but could take a long while. Price increases happen rapidly but the price drops are always slow to come.

IMO this is a case of you don’t know what you don’t know . If you need to ask this you are not building this home yourselves so no way under 100/ sq ft

Where will you find subs to do the work you don't know since all the good ones are taken by contractors and wouldn't give a self build the time of day.

I think it depends where at in Texas. I built a custom home in 2018 in South Texas, total living is 2276, 3 bed 2.5 baths for 200,350.00. That did not include the land (5 acres) or a cement driveway but did include the septic system.

I'm in Texas, and manufactured homes are selling for about that much now. And given that manufactured homes use the cheapest materials, assembly-line type of construction, and don't include the land cost...I'd say no. You cannot build your house for less than $200K.

Texas here, too, D/FW area. Relative just built a shopdominium on an acre for around $175,000. One bedroom, 1 1/2 baths (half bath in shop), full kitchen, living area, dining area, large front porch, and 4 car heated/cooled shop on the other half. Living portion is around 800 sq ft. Was his own GC. Got a conventional loan. Had no issues with hiring out jobs. Was finished in 8 months, fully moved in now. Septic system was over $10,000. Nice finishes inside: granite in kitchen and bathroom, custom baseboards, custom stained cabinets, etc.

For a 3-2, over 2000 sq ft, I don’t think it’d be possible to get in under 200k, fully finished.

ETA: Just for fun, before shop side was done —

Jinx was the shop building already there? The 175k was just to finish the residential half?

No, it was for the entire thing, both sides, done at the same time. The acre was already paid-for, though, I forgot to mention. You can’t see in that pic above, but the door to the apt is to the right, and then the front door is on the other side of building, with covered porch spanning the entire width.

This was in Feb: