What Exactly Does It Mean If A Lot For Sale Includes A Build To Suit Contract

Is building your own house cheaper than to buy one?

One of my friends charges $400 a square foot labor and materials to build high-end houses. I as a value Builder can build the same quality house for about $120 a square foot labor and materials. So it depends on who you hire whether or not it’s cheaper to build your own house or buy one.Some builders pay material markups were others don’t and negotiate fixed prices for labor. By taking away the risk of materials you can negotiate weekly rate with a lot of skilled tradesmen for labor only. Some builders pay electricians $100 an hour to drill holes while others pay carpenter which are $25 an hour to drill the same holes. Same goes with the plumber.Some builders use coupons to purchase materials. In general terms Home Depot will honor a Lowes coupon for example.Generally it is cheaper to build your own house compared to buying a house. When you buy house the builder is going to want his profit and taxes.I just heard of an instance where a former jail that cost the government over $250 a square foot to build in the 80’s is being sold for $20 a square foot. So if you buy that and spend a few hundred thousand dollars remodeling it You would have a monster house for half the price.Yhe point is that if you do things unconventionally and think outside the box you can build for far less

Is it cheaper to custom build a house on your own lot or buy the same house from a contractor who built it himself?

When a contractor builds a house himself for eventual re-sale we call that a “spec” house. It is not necessarily a good thing. In a down market if the house has sat there a while then yes of course you may get a good deal. But BEWARE of builders who have a constant flow of spec homes for sale. I live in Asheville NC and I see builders calling themselves “green builders” and they always have spec homes for sale. They really run up the price of housing in the community - which is not good for the home buyer - and really their primarily client is their investor - NOT the potential buyer. Investors fund these homes to make money - it’s a business - it’s not about the future homeowner at all. They want to build it as cheap as they can (to their certain “standard”) and get the maximum return for their investor, not the maximum house for the future owner. We know of one very popular “green builder” in Asheville that for a 1% premium for the home (about $3,500) they could have had a home that was about 100% more energy efficient in cold weather, it would have been significantly stronger and also safer in a fire situation, and the builder passed on our better system because - as he told me directly - “I got investors - that’s money in our pocket”. He knew that clients mostly look at finish details, kitchens & bathrooms and they don’t care about what’s in the walls.If you choose to build your house yourself, odds are you will get a better home for less money IF you can find a builder that will work with you. That’s kind of the key. There are lots of great builders out there who are open to working for the client, not their investor, you just have to find them.

If you had 1 acre of land and you build a house, how big could it be?

If you had 1 acre of land and you build a house, how big could it be?When building our home, I had to do a lot of research. I had a great GC (General Contractor), but still handled a lot of the paperwork and administration issues myself. I’ll also be putting up pre-fab homes soon, as a new business, so I’ve been researching how that works in the cities and counties around here.The answer depends on local zoning and on several factors:Setbacks: There are rules in most areas about how far back a house must be from the street. In my area, which is zoned agricultural, that’s 150′ from the street. In residential areas, that’s much closer. My old home was in a city and zoning rules said it had to be 75′ back from the street. There are also side and rear setbacks. For that old home, it has to be 9′ from any side or rear property line. For my current home, it has to be 50′ from any side or rear property lines.Percentage of lot covered: With 24 acres, I didn’t need to check on this issue for my new house, but my old city house was in a zone where there were specifications about how much of the lot could be covered by a house or auxiliary buildings. (That includes garages, tool sheds, pool houses, maybe pools - yes, a pool can be considered a “building.”) Many zoning regulations will state that the main building can only cover, say, 50% of the lot (or 25% or 75% - it varies). They may also state that the main building can cover a certain percentage of the lot and additional auxiliary buildings can only cover an additional certain percentage.House Size: Beyond percentage rules, some zoning regulations will even give a maximum building size for some residential districts. There could be multiple reasons for this. One may be that in some areas, if a house were built too big, it might be big enough to be a rental property with multiple units and the intent may be to prevent that.Almost any city or county will have different zones, such as R1, R2, R3 (different types of residential zones), agricultural, industrial, and other zones, too. If you know where you want to build, and know there are 1 acre lots available, the best and easiest thing to do is to call the Zoning and Planning office in that area and tell them where you want to build and ask them the rules about house size for that area.