How much to build a house?

thewing

Does anyone have a rough guesstimate of how much it costs to build a house?Say a standard 4-bedroom house on a 2-acre site - just wondered if anyone had any experience of it?Not looking to build a palace, just a normal enough house.

Cheers for any input

Kimbot

How long is a piece of string really??

Best thing is to think of the approx size you require. What type of layouts etc (i.e. open plan dinning/kitchen area could cut cost down due to 1 less wall going up).

jackbhoy

It varies wildly depending on quality of finish, design etc. I know someone who built a bog standard 3 bed bungalow for 85k, he agreed set price with builder for this. That got him house with 1st/2nd fixings, he just needed to furnish and buy white goods etc.
I know another friend who is building a 5 bed house and at present he has spent well in excess of 500k (excl. cost of site).

godtabh

thewing wrote:

Does anyone have a rough guesstimate of how much it costs to build a house?Say a standard 4-bedroom house on a 2-acre site - just wondered if anyone had any experience of it?Not looking to build a palace, just a normal enough house.

Cheers for any input

There should be a sticky on posts like this!

As has said before there are SO many factors in pricing a house

kmick

Bewteen €85 and €130 per sq. ft + the cost of the site.
Say an average of the two is 107.5 euro

Say you buy a 1/3rd of an acre site in Tipperary for 80,000 and you build a 2000 square foot house it would cost you (2000*107.5) + 80000

That is 215,000 + 80000 = 285,000.

You could do it cheaper if you do some of the work yourself. Also if you do direct labour you might save 30,000 but you will age rapidly dealing with contractors.

lfcjfc

Hi Kmick,

A saving of about 15% by going direct labour vs contractor is low compared to what others are telling me - I've heard savings of between 20 - 30% mentioned.
I'm interested because, I've had a couple of quotes from builders that are making me consider the direct option. I tend to agree with you, that 15% saving may not make the stress worthwhile.

muffler

The sticky on front page of this forum will get a couple of answers.

No point in duplicating posts so I will leave this thread open for today only and then lock it

Do-more

It's a few years since I built, but going direct labour approx. 2500 sq ft cost me €50/sq.ft. No fancy finishes but a well insulated house. Did a small amount of the work myself i.e. painting, floors, tiling etc.

My own opinion is that tradesmen will not be as busy in the coming year and prices for all trades will soften as they compete for work. Similarly builders providers will not be as busy, so there should be a lot more scope for driving a hard bargain on materials. At the end of the day it's really a question of the amount of effort you wish to put into achieving your required finish at the lowest possible cost.;)

If I were to start over again I would probably spend a little more and go for a "passive" house. But I would expect the increased costs to be less than €20K on the complete build.

Edit. Mine was a serviced site so no septic tank, esb poles etc.

paulocon

Check out

http://www.iaosb.com/html/cost_of_construction.html

kmb

This is what i am looking at right now.
Maybe give you a idea.

http://www.mcdonnellhomes.com/frameset.htm

regards

kieran