This article is aimed at those who want to have an overview of the construction costs, ie of costs per square foot. It can really help, offering you several useful tips.
No other kind of project is as complex and time-consuming as a house construction from ground up. Planning out and the preparation of the whole process from buying a land, to planning-designing and finally all the construction stages are a daunting and complicated task. It is extremely important to weight carefully each step. However, building a house is the biggest investment of your life, and therefore it is wise to have an accurate estimate of construction costs even before you start this project. Without a basic and yet accurate estimation of total building costs, you cannot go ahead with your construction.
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From the beginning, one fact should be clarified. If you are interested to find building costs in Texas, Florida, and California or in fact, in any other state, it is recommended to check out a real estate portal, which has actually the prices and costs listed. It is quite hard, almost impossible for me to give you the precise construction costs, as all the material and labor prices are a time function, geographic area, home construction type, etc.
CALCULATION FORMULA
Let’s see the formula that is used usually for estimating the construction costs. It is a simple and rational formula, easy to understand.
“Building (House) Cost per Square Foot = Total Building (House) Cost / Building (House) Area Square Feet”
WHAT ARE THE FACTORS INVOLVED
There are several different factors, which you should take into consideration when estimating costs.
a) Two of the most important are the cost of land and also the cost of leveling the land. These are in fact the first costs to consider.
b) Then follows the actual building costs, which are not less important, such as:
– Labor Costs;
– Material Costs;
– Plumbing & Electrical Costs;
– HVAC Costs;
– Finishing Costs and Furnishing Costs
However, all these costs will vary quite widely depending on the location and geographical area at where you want to build your home. To obtain an accurate estimate, you should to sum up all the costs associated with these factors listed above. Moreover, the overall costs can increase significantly depending on the design. Innovative, ingenious, and fancy designs require more complex and intricate architectural structures, which of course will increase the overall costs.
THE BEST WAY TO ESTIMATE BUILDING COST PER SQUARE FOOT
To obtain some real house overall cost estimates, you should make some calls and meet with different professionals in the business like contractors, engineers and architects. Contact and ask the local contractors, who can give the approximate actual overall construction costs, along with building material costs and labour costs.
An additional great source for house construction related information is your real estate agent. Ask for the listing prices in the area, where you wish to build your home and have a look at the ones whose design fits approximately with your future home. Divide the listed price of the house by the area of the house (square footage of the house), to get an accurate per square foot cost.
Get your all-home designs ready and after that, you can easily estimate all the costs associated with the different factors involved in the construction process like land leveling costs, material costs, labor costs, plumbing costs, etc. In this way, you can have an overall cost of your house.
However, it is extremely important to take into consideration all the variables that can affect the total costs of your new home. Only in this way, you can have a more realistic and accurate estimate of total building costs. Local real estate agents and building contractors are the best information source when it comes to estimate the overall costs of your home.
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