All Forum Posts by: Ronald Starusnak

 Hey Mike, if you see any build-able lots over in Skaneatelesfor sale, feel free to send them my way. :] 

http://www.oregonfirst.com/

Thanks Jay. We are certainly going to move closer to the Portland area instead of Bend as initially planned. We are still in the early phases of planning the transition. We build for the biggest snow load in the US here in Upstate NY already. We get the highest annual snow fall and have the highest requirement for insulation R rating. I am going to look into the problems you guys have brought up tomorrow morning. It appears the licensing requirements to become a licensed electrician and plumber are pretty lenient with only having to pass a written test. To acquire a GC license in NY you must know all codes, including electrical and plumbing. Shouldn't be a large hurdle. 

With the investments I hold in NY and we will be leaving our company operating in NY as well, we will have some cushion to push us through should we run into some issues. Thanks for taking the time to read and provide input guys. 

 Karen, I think the exact opposite is happening. There is a major housing shortage in Oregon. That's why the prices are so high. Supply and demand. 

Your electrical plumbing and HVAC are double what my costs are here just to start, same with the excavation. That looks like it could be a big cost difference right there. Have you considered having your in-house guys doing all the rough in and just having the licensed sign off on the work? Here in some cities we have to have the plumber pull the permit, they let us do the work, then they inspect it and sign off on it and we also pay them for each inspection and correct it as we go. We can plumb a hole house in 2-3 days with 2 guys if we're using pex. That's about $2,400 in labor on the high end and then our materials will be under 3k. Few rolls of pex, water heater, shut offs. 

 I'll look into it, I think the $150 sq/ft is including profit. That's almost exactly the national retail average cost to build a mid-range house. I analyze and perhaps over analyze everything that I do. I am a nerd first and an investor and contractors 2nd! haha, I just looked up the pricing because you guys brought it up. Check out contractortalk.com to see what other builders are building for. We're talking $60-$65 a foot to build a basic spec house without any fancy finishes. This is about what we're seeing here. I simply can't imagine costs more than doubling because the housing market isn't double there, sure the prices are higher but they're certainly not double unless we're considering costs that I am not yet aware of. 

https://www.contractortalk.com/f4/average-how-much-do-builders-charge-build-house-10454/

 What are the largest cost differences that you've noticed? We're not heading out there until December or so, the time in between is to be spent on research and website development. I've already started our website and SEO to rank on some popular search terms. 

 The guy we build for $120 wants us to build for $90 a ft here and they're getting it done with pretty decent properties as well. Pretty crazy.

Nik, we build the houses ourselves.. Don't know where all of the confusion is coming from. There's no way $150/sqft is your builders cost to build. If you are hiring a builder then maybe they are charging you $150 a ft. If they're claiming the cost to build is $150 a ft then you need to look and see if they have a profit in there somewhere. If they don't have profit in there then they're not really builders and they're really just paper pushers that hire sub contractors to do all of the work. 

Lumber availability, Shingle, stone, insulation, these are materials shipped in from other countries and states and the costs between states aren't going to be that significant especially when dealing with national suppliers. Not to mention, the materials in NY are razed at nearly 10% and from my understanding Or has no sales tax? That sounds like a savings right there as well.

Getting back to your point, $150 a ft is the national average to build a house WHEN hired specifically by a homeowner to build them a house. The builders cost is not $150. Our cost in materials and labor is lower than $90 even, here in NY we are building at $72 a ft and charging $120 to build it and we profit about $90-$100k on an average sized home. Check the spreadsheet I linked to see our coats vs profit. 

Not to mention, it may be difficult carting that equipment across the country.