how much to build a house
ball park estimate. if comps run on a house at 250k in a neighbhorhood, and every other house is worth 250k as well.
what does it cost to demolish and rebuild that same house?
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The cost of other (non-new construction) houses in the neighborhood have no relationship to the cost you'll incur to build a new house.
Your costs will be based on a lot of factors:
- Location
- Level/type of finishes
- Style of house
- Size of house
- Whether you GC it yourself or hire a builder
- The types of contractors you use
- Your negotiating ability
- How strategic you are with your designs to keep costs down
I've built houses for $60/sf, and I've built similar houses in other locations with different contractors for $90/sf. I've investigated building the same types of houses in other locations and have estimated up to $200/sf, depending on the contractors I ended up finding. In other words, there's no simple answer to your question.
There are two ways to get a reasonable idea of the cost for a particular build:
1. Do the take-offs yourself to get an idea of sub-contractor costs. If you have renovation experience, that should give you a general idea of what you'll spend on each trade. For example, if you know that you pay $1/sf for sheetrock installation and finishing, and you know you'll need 8000 square feet of drywall for the house, you can estimate that sheetrock will cost you $8000. If you do that for each trade, you can get a reasonable idea of the all-in costs.
Of course, you have to have in the stuff that you may not be accustomed to. For example:
- Architect/drawing fees
- Engineering fees
- Site clearing
- Demolition/removal
- Permits
- Site preparation
- Utilities
So, you'll have to get familiar with those facets of building as well, and you'll have to get a reasonable idea of what those things will cost you.
2. Get the drawings completed and take them to some builders in your area for bids.
If you do #1 and GC the project yourself, you'll pay considerably less than if you go with a builder. But, if you've never built before (and especially if you don't have a lot of renovation experience), you're probably better off going the #2 route.
Regardless, if you really want to get an idea of build costs, you're going to have to do some legwork and potentially spend some money to get some drawings done.