Who here bought vacent lot and built a new house. What costs?

[sunsprit]

Cattknap is correct ... a third drawback to "alternative" homes: they can be difficult to insure because they don't meet established building codes.

However, this drawback may be more than offset by the very low cost of construction. I know of a couple of mountain "homes" that were built for under $10 psf ... using site supplied earth and a bit of cement for a rammed earth structure. Partially excavated into a hillside for an end wall and some of two sidewalls, the house stays cool in the summer and is easy to heat in the winter. It has a "sod" roof, which also acts as an insulator. Portions of the front South facing wall are salvage 55 gallon drums filled with an anti-freeze solution, and painted black for heat absorbtion ... to re-radiate at night (the house is at 7,500' elevation). The back wall has a pantry room behind it that stays a steady 55F for root vegetable storage. With an old wood cookstove, cooking and heating is cheap. The house is "off the grid" and uses solar panels to charge batteries for low voltage lighting and a 110v (inverter supplied) small refrigerator.

Similarly, I have friends with a remote "house" in Baja California, at a fishing cove where they live for 5 months out of the year. They have to truck in propane to run a refrigerator and a small generator to run a chest freezer, but most of their electricity comes from solar panels which run the lights, computer, DVD and radio, cellular phone, and satellite uplink. The house was a 10 x 35 trailer, but they've surrounded it with a wide full-length enclosed porch. They do most of their cooking on a propane BBQ on the porch, and laundry in an old wringer washer (their dress code is pretty casual ... levi's and khaki's unless the weather turns nasty for awhile). Potable fresh water is a communal well, very limited supply; they fill a 300 gallon tank on top of the trailer for "pressure" water gravity fed to the sink and shower. (Toilet is an outhouse). They do a lot of canning of their fresh fish for consumption back "home" in Colorado during the months they're in the USA. They claim that 5 months there costs them about $1,500 for food and fuel. Their big expense is fuel for their 22' boat, which can run them $3-500 month if they're fishing every day. They've got less than $12K in the "house", and an annual lease payment for their site of $199. Except for the very low lease payment, you could do this type of housing in many places ... if it suits your requirements.

My point of all this is that there are many ways to "beat" the high costs of housing ownership ... it all depends upon your chosen lifestyle and where you want to live in relationship to "essential" services, shopping, schools, recreation, employment, etc. You can do this in many states, and surprisingly, not very far away from a lot of cities and urban centers.

[lookingfortheperfectplace]

When I was looking into getting a manufactured home in the desert or Cherry Valley area of Ca, I was told that is usually cost around $60,000 to put the home on your own land. That's for permits, utilities, and lot preperation. But that was a "ballpark" figure. It would be cheaper if the land is flat and utilites are already there. The homes we looked at were the higher end ones that look like a normal house that were going for around $120k but those for for 2000 sqft, you could get a nice one for less than 100k. We liked the brands Silvercrest, Cavco, Palm Harbor, and I think Hallmark was good.

[jrtracy]

Almost nothing you read on this (or any other forum) pertaining to housing or building costs is pertinent to Texas. Costs are 1/2 to 1/5 those of the rest of the country in every category. Half-million homes in New England and Fla are tear-downs in Texas.

$100 per sq ft will get you a very nice (upscale in virtually every corner of America) house here. You can do it yourself for $65-$85 easy.

Would I rather live there than here? Of course. For all the same reasons you do. But I can't aford to. You just have to let go of the California Dreamin thing.

[belovenow]

Originally Posted by Need_affordable_home

I cant find this information on google. I search contractors and theres no mention of price! If theres a price, its for both house and lot. I need to know how much it would cost to have a house built on your own lot.
Your costs can help give me an estimate. The only estimates I have are for PSL, FL that I saw in a magazine and they wanted almost $100 a living square foot, a 2000 square foot house on your lot was like $197k. Vacent lot was $65k to over $100k. Using those figures, its a few percent cheaper to purchase a lot with an existing house(built recently) But in some areas, I feel I can get a much better deal buying vacent land and having a house built on the land, existing houses+lots cost quite a bit more!
For those of you that choose to buy vacent land and have a house built on it, what was the costs, how big lot and house(give square feet) and how much did you save? I have seen some very affordable land in desirable locations, even in California that I can afford. The only question is what costs would be incurred by having a contractor or house builder build me one? I dont need a big, fancy house or anything, lets say something simple like a 3/1 1200 living square feet or even a 2/1 1000 living square feet. Could I have a such house built for under $100k or better yet under $50k? Im assuming the same house in different cities and states would have different price quotes. I can learn by knowing what it cost you, for those of you that chose to "build on your own lot" thanks so much for reading this and responding.

I hope you and other readers heed the warnings already posted in reply. Anyone can market themselves as a contractor. You don't just want "anyone" to build a house for you.

Your absolute best bet is to find a good reputable homebuilder company whose homes you've already seen a few of and called references for - and then work out plans and a deal with them to get a solid estimate. Unless your a DIY-pro who can do finishing work yourself, do not even try to cut corners. If you really want to go cheap - then find a good trailer/prefabricated home and put on your lot. Otherwise, to really build, you need to realize that either you do the whole thing yourself and plan to need 2 or more years of hard work and stress to complete the project, or you need to ante up and pay an experienced homebuilder.

The nice thing about hiring a reputable homebuilder is that typically you can expect the finished product to be worth 20-30% more than you paid for the land and house together (mileage obviously varies, but in NE Indiana that's figure I've heard given and seen come to fruition myself).

[Twostep]

You are planing to build in FL?

[tank924]

a friend of mine managed a model home in gleanloch farms here in houston/tomball area. i asked him how much did this model home cost to build? he said it costed 105,000. and its on the market for 319,000. and it was top of the line crap in kitchen and bath. who knows maybe that DBA helped them get the materials alot cheaper.

all i know is these homebuilders set some high inflated azz prices and then those lame inflated yearly taxes come due. so if u can Beat the system and BE the builder and contract what u cant or dont wanna do ur self. and save that kinda money.by all means help urself to a biger piece of that pie. and for those damn taxes HOMESTEAD it if u can.

and these builders hire some of the same mexican people we hire to do work. so my sugguestion would be go see whos builden what in that area. and use some of there contractors that are doing work for them. im sure they can use the work! most builders require contractors to be insured.