Builder Price Drop ?

Someday

Hi Guys

In the process of buying a site in Louth and i have spoken to a lot of people who are in the building game, they said builders are dropping their prices and they would bite your hand off to get your house to build ! Is this true, has anyone seen a difference yet ?

Thanks

muffler

Cant comment on Louth but up here in Donegal the prices are about the same as last year and maybe even a slight bit higher.

0lordy

In Donegal again, a friend about to build a house was advised by his architect to hang on until the New Year before looking for quotes, as he might get a better price then. No real data on prices actually dropping though.

Cheiftan

A hopeful urban myth I would think, are suppliers / merchants going to drop prices ? Don't hold your breath.
Will the various trades all drop thier prices because the main contractor/ main builder has to drop a bit of his margin to get a job ? Don't think so.

A consultant engineer said this to me the other day in relation to his own build his reasoning was that builders would take the left hand off you for work in the lean months Jan/Feb/Mar , well from talking to various trades / subbies out there its not the case and anyone thinking so is fooling themselves.
Its going to take a hell of a dropoff for good builders to start lowering rates.

It's got to the stage where people are'nt buying houses cos they are waiting , waiting , waiting and waiting now its going to start people not building cos they are waiting , waiting , waiting .......

Are we now to enter the construction twilight zone ?

I'm in civil engineering so its not gonna affect me that much thank God :cool:

Builderfromhell

I'm a builder and I'm finding that some sub-contractors are ringing me looking for work. But these are peolple I used once and would not use again. Good builders and sub contarctors are all very busy. Even with large housing projects stopped there's a huge amount of one off houses, extensions etc. being built. I myself curently have 7 projects to start in next few months.

gsxr1

Builderfromhell wrote: »

I'm a builder and I'm finding that some sub-contractors are ringing me looking for work. But these are peolple I used once and would not use again. Good builders and sub contarctors are all very busy. Even with large housing projects stopped there's a huge amount of one off houses, extensions etc. being built. I myself curently have 7 projects to start in next few months.

great news. I thought the banks where tightening up on bridging loans.

we have 5 one offs on the go but there is a slump at the min in the kildare area.

Someday

This is fact, spoke to about 15 people in the game in Louth, not enough work out there now and the prices are going down. I will be building in the summer

dfcelt

Thats welcome news Someday, will be building in N.Louth myself. Hopefully I'll have planning by the summer

Villain

Labour is certainly going down, but materials are going the other way!

sandyg

We are in the middle of our build in louth. A lot of builders we were pricing were around the same price. (we knew our builder from previous work he has done) As for materials it pays to shop around in each of the hardware stores as they are undercutting each other when were were getting our prices for materials.

witnessmenow

My Dad who is in construction (national scale) reckons that the price of a builder wont drop all that much at all, as the cost of construction isn't going to change much. Price of land he reckons is a diffrent story.

Someday

Read the Indo today, 37,000 houses being built in 2008 ! Even better news, massive drop next year, where is the work coming from !

Builderfromhell

Witnessmenow,
Would have to dis-agree. I'm getting calls from sub-contractors looking for work. I've been able to be more competitive with my prices as I can now get work done cheaper. I build for less but my profits are as good as the boom years.

diydan

I would have to share the pessimism. Someone I know finished a house recently, several months earlier than expected.

Reason: tradesmen were tripping over themselves to get in and do their work. Gone are the days when you had to hound a plumber, electrician or carpenter to get them back to finish.

I appreciate that this not the case all over the country but it is in my area...hopefully we can contain the rash.

galwaytt

Someday wrote: »

Read the Indo today, 37,000 houses being built in 2008 ! Even better news, massive drop next year, where is the work coming from !

Er, no. Luckily, we too have picked up extra work in the last week's, and are now booked up to March.

As for pricing, there's little latitude in the cost for reductions, and where there may be, Mr Gormley has nicely agreed to bump it back up for you..... http://www.cif.ie/asp/section.asp?s=1276

Like the man from IJM said, it's possible to build a house to cost Eur50/yr to heat. But it costs 40% extra to build it - will your bank approve you for an extra 40% mortgage - and would you want it even if you could?