When building or buying a home, the topic of square-foot cost will inevitably come up. Looking through the building plans, it is mentioned on the prints. Working with an architect, everything revolves around the square feet. Therefore, it’s natural to assume a linear relationship between square feet and cost: That by dividing the final price of the build by the square footage, you get the cost per square foot.
To assume so, however, is far from correct.
The cost per square foot calculation is meant to break down the cost of the home into an easy-to-understand metric that helps you compare homes in the area. For home builders and contractors, it helps them determine the right amount of parts and materials to order from vendors in order to help calculate the overall cost of building a home.
It is important not to fixate on these numbers (especially not the lower number), but to keep them in mind and use them as a guide. Production costs include many different costs for many different aspects in the build.
Final price does not only depend on the building’s size, but also on the house’s location, shape, layout, and volume. Two different houses may be the exact same square-footage, but Building A has four walls and a simple roof. Building B has many more walls, some which are curved, and a complicated roof. The cost per square footage in this case will be completely different between the two homes.
Using the same example above, think about if Building B had vaulted ceilings. To create those vaulted ceilings would not only have taken more materials because of the added volume to the house, it would also have taken more labor and more time, therefore costing more money.
It can, of course, completely complicate matters if Building A was built in an urban area, which tends to have higher costs per square footage.
Remember that cost per square foot includes total under roof construction. In earlier times areas such as garages, basements and porches were a lot cheaper to build which is why people tend to refer to livable square-footage area. Today, however, these areas are larger and include just as many amenities as the rest of the house.
If you think about which rooms in a house might be the most expensive, many will typically respond that the kitchen, master bath and family room fall into that category. This is because generally these rooms require more plumbing, more wiring and include more expensive finishes.
When you include the cost of the shell, however, the cost differences between various areas in your home are less than you might think.
Take your garage and your bedroom for example. One would generally expect to pay more for a larger bedroom. In most cases though the two areas are more similar than you think. Both have floors, framing, drywall, windows, and wiring. A bedroom has carpets, closets, and a bedroom door. A garage on the other hand might not have carpets and closets, but it has the garage door, different drywall, a door to the house and a door to exit the building.
Looking at this and making the comparison, its hard not to notice the similarities in cost.
Taking the above into account, it is seriously recommended once again that you don’t fixate on the cost per square foot. Furthermore, it is important that you don’t use the cost per square foot as a way to compare different contractors. It would be similar to comparing apples and oranges. You would need to take a more meaningful look at the quotations and compare things like labor and materials to accurately gauge costs incurred by different contractors.
There are plenty of decisions that need to be made while you’re building a new home. It would be a good idea to know what you are looking for in a home, and to ask as many questions as you need to when discussing your options with a home builder. Real home value is measured through features like layout, finishes, customization and location – but price per square foot is a simple, but useful calculation that can be used to compare similar properties.
Here at Shelter Ridge, we ensure that you know exactly what is going into the construction of your build and which costs will be incurred and why. Get in touch for more information and view our recent projects.