Thinking of building a house HELP!! Please

ELSEBELLE

Hi to all,

We are looking for some advice / guidance please from people who have built there own houses. We have been looking for a house for the past 6 months, we have visited a lot of showhouses and second hand homes. We were fairly close on a few occasions to buying but kept having second thoughts we were looking at a 4 bed semi for 290k but then we came across a 0.70 acre site for 140k. So we reckon that we could build a house (timber frame 4 bed bungalow / maybe a dormer) nothing flash just a nice home. We don't know much about costs of construction etc. Would we be mad in thinking that we can build our home for 300k (including site price). We have not looked into planning yet but we don't forsee a problem local needs etc. Anyway, we guess our question is could we build a modest but decent home for 160k? We know it wont be luxurious. What would our next steps be? Approach builders? Get plans drawn up etc??. We would be most grateful for any advice you can give.

Thank You

Latchy

Just wondering OP are there any auction sites were you could check out property under the hammer ? .You could bid for and buy a house at a knockdown price and do all the renovation / repair work yourself ,possibly saving yourself thousends of euros .

Look at the stickies at the top of this forum, shedloads of info there.
As for sites & SH houses, prices are only going one way, DOWN! if you can wait, wait.

topcatcbr

ELSEBELLE wrote: »

Hi to all,

We are looking for some advice / guidance please from people who have built there own houses. We have been looking for a house for the past 6 months, we have visited a lot of showhouses and second hand homes. We were fairly close on a few occasions to buying but kept having second thoughts we were looking at a 4 bed semi for 290k but then we came across a 0.70 acre site for 140k. So we reckon that we could build a house (timber frame 4 bed bungalow / maybe a dormer) nothing flash just a nice home. We don't know much about costs of construction etc. Would we be mad in thinking that we can build our home for 300k (including site price). We have not looked into planning yet but we don't forsee a problem local needs etc. Anyway, we guess our question is could we build a modest but decent home for 160k? We know it wont be luxurious. What would our next steps be? Approach builders? Get plans drawn up etc??. We would be most grateful for any advice you can give.

Thank You

There is an old guide on building to get max value. Spend about twice the price of the site on building the house.

muffler

As advised there are a few good threads here and particularly the couple that are stickied on the front page.

Typically you could expect to pay anything from €80 - €160 per square foot but the building costs will be dictated by size obviously, location, type of build and method (contract or direct labour). I know the figure given is not very helpful but you should engage a local architect/engineer/technician to give you more exact figures or you could do worse than contact a good contractor and discuss it with him for an approximate estimate.

Your site seems to a bit expensive. Maybe you could find something a bit smaller/cheaper which obviously allows you a wee bit more freedom on the building costs.

Slig

140K for a 0.7 Acre site seems excessively expensive, is it being sold with planning permission? Also if its rural check the development plans before you buy as some LAs have a minimum site area and you could be caught out.

RKQ

Currently inspecting a 1500sqft bungalow with convertable attic, - contract 143K which is €95sqft.

However the attic can be easily converted as it has proper floor joists and fire escape (MO8) roof lights, adding another c900sqft.

It can be done but it will take good budget management. Direct labour may save abit more but you will have to work hard as the Main Contractor.:)